John Mascaro is President of Turf-Tec International
This soil mound on top of the turf has an interesting story. This high school in
eastern Virginia had an enormous amount of rain after the remnants of Hurricane
Joaquin came through, 8 inches to be exact. After the clouds cleared the grounds
crew went about the regular maintenance procedures and while preparing to
mow the stadium football field, the grounds crew saw at least 10 of these piles of
sand. After further inspection, they turned out to be towering "hills" or "chimneys"
on top of crawfish burrows. According to locals, when this area of the state (only
2.5 miles from Lake Prince, which eventually flows into Chesapeake Bay) gets
this much rain, the crawfish move from their normal areas like ditches and reten-
tion ponds in the vicinity into the slightly higher and drier elevation of the football
stadium. As it turns out, the little critters like their burrows to be dry at the top, but
filled with water at the bottom. These burrows can extend up to 3 feet deep or
more. When the flood waters retreat, the crawfish go back to their normal marshy
areas and after the crew made sure they were gone, they continued to maintain
the field as usual knocking down the hills and adding seed to make sure the spots
grew back. No crawfish were harmed during the maintenance of the field; good
thing it was not in Louisiana or they would be having jambalaya!
Photo submitted by Billy Pipp, regional grounds manager for GCA Services.
George Iams is grounds manager, GCA Services at Isle of Wight County Schools
in Windsor, VA.
John Mascaro's Photo Quiz Answers from page 25
www.stma.org December 2015 | SportsTurf 29
If you would like to submit a photograph for John Mascaro's Photo Quiz please send it to John Mascaro, 1471 Capital Circle NW, Ste # 13, Tallahassee,
FL 32303 call (850) 580-4026 or email to john@turf-tec.com. If your photograph is selected, you will receive full credit. All photos submitted will
become property of SportsTurf magazine and the Sports Turf Managers Association.
