Bob Did Some Unique Hunting During His Vacation

Earlier this year, Julie and I had some sod installed in our back yard. It had been looking great. Unfortunately, something apparently thought it would also taste great.

I spent the first couple days of my vacation with my parents in Sigourney. Tuesday when I was heading home, Julie called to inform me, "We have a mole." This didn't come as a huge surprise. One of our neighbors across the street had one a couple weeks ago. Then our next door neighbor had one doing damage along their driveway. You knew it was only a matter of time.

We tried to be proactive. We prepared a batch of castor oil, Murphy's oil soap, and water and put it along our property line to encourage him to stay on his side, so to speak. In retrospect, it probably would have been a good idea to do the entire property line and not just the area where I could see he'd been. Oops. In any case, he/she/it came under our neighbors fence and rooted around a bit. Quite a bit. I got the traps out of the garage and tried those. I got some tasty peanuts for him/she/it to try and put them in every tunnel.

After a couple days of continuing damage, the trails stopped. Julie believes her four-tine rake may have done the trick while I believe it was the tasty peanuts. Although I will tell you, watching her attack mother earth with that rake was funny and scary, all at the same time.

Here're some tips that I learned from talking to a lawn care expert who often gets the question of how to rid a yard of moles:

• Moles like grubs, but their number one food source is earthworms. The more rain, the more worms, the more mole activity. If you've seen them in your neighborhood, you're definitely not alone.
• If you see mole activity in your yard, you should mark the tunnels and flatten them. Feeding tunnels will be used only once. However, if you see a tunnel that raises a second time, that's a main mole runway. THAT is where you want to put your mole trap or poison peanuts.

Here's hoping our mole really is gone and that you don't encounter them.

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