In a game, how to show a normal terrain and after an animation show the terrain with a hole?

In my game project I have land and at a certain point in the game the character will need to dig the land to get an item.
In this case, I want to do something like, the character arrives at the place to dig, but I don’t want to show the character digging, I want to use the camera to show the landscape and just the sound of digging, because I don’t want to have to create the animation of the character digging, but later the earth will have to be excavated.
What would be the best way to make the terrain look normal and after the animation is excavated?