call before you dig. they aren't kidding.

One afternoon a couple of years ago, my mom and I decided to go tree shopping for my back yard. I took pictures of the areas that I wanted to put some trees or bushes in, had a few ideas of what I was looking for and then we set off for the tree place.  I was so prepared!!


Mom and I picked out 4 larger bush things or are they trees? What constitutes a tree, really?  Anyway, we picked them out, loaded them into the SUV and went on our merry way.  When we got back to my house, we placed each tree in it's spot and stepped back to make sure it looked as good from far away as it did close up.  Once we confirmed the spots we decided to start digging away. 


My mom asked me if I had called the U-Digg people and I think I probably mumbled something back to her that may have sounded like maybe...or something....  Anywho, we start digging and digging and my mom starts complaining about Johnson county dirt and how it's so hard compared to her dirt at home.  Apparently the dirt at home is like water....dirt around my house is apparently like cement though. 


So we're digging and digging and digging and my mom hits something.  It's hard and black.  Sh!t, it's a snake!  I start squealing because that's what I do best and running around like a crazy person.  But she keeps poking at it.  Sh!t again!!  It's really not a snake, it's some kind of wire thingy.  (also, do snakes live below the ground like that?  Ew, it just grosses me out even more...)


Being the smart people that we are, we keep poking at it to try to figure out what it is.  No worries that it could electrocute or really really hurt one of us...  So I run inside to see what things might be off and what the line that we just sliced in half might be and realize that my TV is off.  That's weird, I think to myself....how would that just turn off on it's own?  I know Laila wouldn't turn it off, her favorite soap was on. 

I turn it back on and the picture is all fuzzy and black and white.  Weird....

CRAP!  We cut the cable line in half.

I go back outside to give my mom the news while I'm on hold with the cable company; and while we're relieved that it wasn't anything bigger, we're still both a little freaked out. 

Finally, the cable company comes back on the line and I think the conversation went something like this:

ME: "Hi, my TV picture is fuzzy and black and white"

Cable: OK, I'm not showing any activity at your address.  We don't show any other outages, did something else happen?

ME: Um, well, we were planting some trees and may have hit a wire.

Cable: You may have hit a wire or you hit a wire?

ME: Oh, um, welllll, we might have hit it just a little.

Cable: Ok, did you see the wire when you started digging up the dirt?

ME: Yup. 

Cable: Is there a chance that you would have cut it in half?

ME: Could be....

Cable: Ok, we can send a technician out tomorrow, they'll call you before they come.

ME: Perfect.

Phew. Not as big of a deal as I thought, but I was dreading how much it was possibly going to cost to have them come out on a Sunday.

Not having a TV in the house makes things sooo quiet!  I mean, I don't watch a ton of TV myself, but I generally have it on for background noise at the very least. 

Sunday morning rolls around and it just happens to be Mother's Day weekend (which is why my mom was in town).  So, my mom and I go to church, meet my dad, sister, and brother in law for lunch and then the cable company calls.  Perfect timing guys!

Luckily we were about finished with lunch and we were eating close to my house so we could get back to my place quickly. 

We get to my house and find a big white conversion van parked in front and two guys just moseying around waiting for us to arrive.  I reluctantly show them where we dug up the cable line and they start chit chatting with my dad.  Long story short, they fixed it super quickly, didn't make me pay for anything, and said that it happens all the time!  Apparently in newer subdivisions they only bury the cable line like 4 inches below the sod=DUMB. 

After all of the weekend festivities concluded, I called U-Digg and made an appointment for them to come out and mark all of my buried lines.  We managed to pic one hot spot in the yard.  There were a few things buried where we decided to dig.  Good work, eh? 

Here's that little spot that we dug up.  See all of that orange?  Oh yeah, those are all wires of some kind....

We did get some landscaping done without digging up any wires.  Looks good, right?