I returned from vacation and saw this giant hole right in the middle of my backyard  My first thought was: did someone try to bury or dig something up? I was about to call the police, but then I saw something strange at the bottom of the hole and changed my mind 

Let me tell you where this massive hole came from – be careful  Continued in the first comment 

When I came home from vacation a few days earlier than planned, I was looking forward to peace and quiet. But instead, I was greeted by a sight that took my breath away – a huge hole gaping in the middle of my backyard.

Deep and uneven – as if it had been hastily dug by creatures from the underworld.

My first thought was: did someone try to bury… or unearth something? I was reaching for my phone to call the police.

But then I noticed something strange at the bottom – loose soil, crisscrossed with tunnels and claw marks. The longer I looked, the clearer it became: this wasn’t man-made.

I called a pest control expert, and he quickly gave a diagnosis: moles. Apparently, while I was enjoying the beach, a full-scale construction project had been unfolding beneath my yard.

An army of moles had been digging tunnels in search of food – and then things got interesting.

Because of their intense activity, the ground had lost its stability. The layers of soil began to collapse – this phenomenon is called ground subsidence, or scientifically: suffosion.

Simply put, the earth loses its internal support and sinks down like a funnel. And that’s exactly what happened in my case: the moles did their job, and the unstable soil simply gave way.

Now, instead of a neat lawn, I have a crater the size of a swimming pool. Funny, really – if it hadn’t been for the initial shock, I might have taken it as the perfect excuse to build a pond… or at least to learn something about geology.