Lexington-Fayette Animal Care & Control was called to a home on Featherston Drive on Saturday after a dachshund named Veeta ventured into a tunnel she discovered in her owner’s yard. What she found down there was not a modest hole. According to officials, years of erosion, natural limestone and the root system of a nearby silver maple had carved out what they described as a maze-like cave beneath the lawn.

To be scrupulously fair to Veeta: dachshunds were bred specifically to chase badgers down into their burrows. She did not malfunction. She executed her original job description flawlessly, in a suburb, on a Saturday, against a hole with no badger in it.

By the time responders arrived, Veeta was roughly four feet underground and nearly ten feet from where she had entered. The Lexington Fire Department was called in to help dig, and the two agencies worked together until she was safely recovered.

Veeta emerged unharmed. The yard did not fare quite as well.

For the rest of us, there is a mildly unsettling takeaway buried in here: the cave was not new. It had been quietly forming under that lawn for years, and it took a small determined dog with a nose for tunnels to file the report.