This is the Guardian.

I'm Brenda Borel and I'm the author of Going Underground

Inside the World of the Mole Ketchers.

I'm always looking for stories about these kind of little secret corners of the world.

These subcultures where people are just passionate about some small thing

that I think many of us can relate to, even if we can't relate to the particularities of it.

And I remember I just, I woke up one morning and I thought,

Mole Ketchers, are they a thing? Do they exist?

And I guess I've written a lot about people and animals and

how they get along in the world or don't get along in some cases.

So this wasn't totally out there for me.

But I did a search on the internet as every person knows how to do.

And the first thing I stumbled on was the website for the Guild of British Mole Ketchers.

And I was immediately intrigued.

It sketched out the history of Mole Ketching, you know,

it dates back hundreds of years and it laid out this explicit code of ethics.

And I thought, wow, this is pretty intense stuff.

And it was all very intellectual.

And so pretty soon I discovered that actually there wasn't just one

Mole Ketching Association and that's when this really became a story.

As other was also the British Mole Ketchers Register and Association of Professional Mole Ketchers.

And I thought that's a lot of organizations for a tiny profession.

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