I live in Bay area, San Francisco. I found that my front yard has a lot of
small holes. Everytime I fill them up, they will pop up somewhere else. I
don't know what kind of creatures they are (gophers?). I just want to get
rid of them.

Do you know a way not too messy (i.e., don't want to see dead animals
everywhere) to get rid of them?

My house is on a raised foundation just like other old houses in this area.
Will they do any damage to the foundation or any piping underneath? Thanks
for your help.

Bill wrote:
I live in Bay area, San Francisco. I found that my front yard
has a
lot of small holes. Everytime I fill them up, they will pop up
somewhere else. I don't know what kind of creatures they are
(gophers?). I just want to get rid of them.

Do you know a way not too messy (i.e., don't want to see dead
animals everywhere) to get rid of them?

My house is on a raised foundation just like other old houses
in
this area. Will they do any damage to the foundation or any
piping
underneath? Thanks for your help.

They are most likely moles. Moles eat grubs in the soil. They
will not harm your foundation or any pipes buried in the soil.

--

Travis in Shoreline (just North of Seattle) Washington
USDA Zone 8
Sunset Zone 5

[Julia T]

You might have voles, meaning field mice. Moles will push up the earth into humpy tunnels as they move along; voles are smaller, so you would just see the entry holes as evidence.

Voles can be deterred a number of ways, but if your neighbors have them too, you probably will only be able to get rid of them for a few months at a time before they'll come back.

You can trap them with mousetraps. Bait with peanut butter, and put the mousetrap on the ground next to a hole. Cover the hole and the mousetrap with an overturned bucket. Leave there for a few days, then check the trap.

You can poison them with mole/vole killer. It's dried corn impregnated with poison. Good way to lace your garden soil with chemicals. Obviously, don't grow any edibles if you use this method.

You can spray the yard with castor oil. I have no idea whether that works.

You can sprinkle the yard with water filled with nematodes, in June. This kills your grubs, so the voles will find fewer fast-food meals within your soil. They may leave the yard in search of food. But, they may come back if they miss the taste of your seedlings' roots and rhododendron bark, or whatever plant materials they like in your yard. Or, a new population may move in.

You can bury bulbs in two inches of sharp pebbles or wire cages. Spray tulip and crocus flowers when they emerge with a solution of water, dishwashing liquid, garlic oil, and tabasco sauce.

Good luck.

Originally Posted by Bill

I live in Bay area, San Francisco. I found that my front yard has a lot of
small holes. Everytime I fill them up, they will pop up somewhere else. I
don't know what kind of creatures they are (gophers?). I just want to get
rid of them.

Do you know a way not too messy (i.e., don't want to see dead animals
everywhere) to get rid of them?

My house is on a raised foundation just like other old houses in this area.
Will they do any damage to the foundation or any piping underneath? Thanks
for your help.

"Bill" wrote in message
...
I live in Bay area, San Francisco. I found that my front yard has a lot of
small holes. Everytime I fill them up, they will pop up somewhere else. I
don't know what kind of creatures they are (gophers?). I just want to get
rid of them.

Do you know a way not too messy (i.e., don't want to see dead animals
everywhere) to get rid of them?


There are a few traps for gophers/moles, but most of them are a pain to use,
and then there is the hassle of having to retrieve the trap and dispose of
the contents. I prefer to use bait. And in Washington state, they are, or
were illegal to use.

Mole bait is this gel that supposedly looks like a grub or slug, gopher bait
is usually a block or pellets. You rarely see poisoned rodents, the poison
causes the rodent to die of internal bleeding, so they usually go back to
their nest to rest.

These are the two brand's you'll most likely see at home depot or orchard
supply.

http://www.tomcatbrand.com/molegopher.html
http://www.victorpest.com/store/dept.asp?dept%5Fid=10

You used to be able to buy poison gas smoke bombs, which worked with
questionable reliability, but product liability issues got rid of them from
most stores. You would cover up all the holes you could find, shove a smoke
bomb down a hole or two, light it, then cover those up too, with the hope
that the poison smoke would gas the gopher. The problem with it was that by
the time you got all the holes covered up, the gopher had plugged up the
tunnels, so you never actually gassed them.

Julia T wrote:
You might have voles, meaning field mice. Moles will push up
the
earth into humpy tunnels as they move along; voles are smaller,
so
you would just see the entry holes as evidence.

I have never seen moles "push up the earth into humpy tunnels".
They will push up the earth from their tunneling into mounds but
there is no evidence of their tunnels on the surface.

snip

--

Travis in Shoreline (just North of Seattle) Washington
USDA Zone 8
Sunset Zone 5

In article E4B_e.23509$Fh4.18442@trndny03, "Travis"
wrote:

Julia T wrote:
You might have voles, meaning field mice. Moles will push up
the
earth into humpy tunnels as they move along; voles are smaller,
so
you would just see the entry holes as evidence.

I have never seen moles "push up the earth into humpy tunnels".
They will push up the earth from their tunneling into mounds but
there is no evidence of their tunnels on the surface.

It's not their commonest method but occasionally (especially in a badly
grub infested lawn) the mole will move under the sod so close to the
surface that you can see the whole length of a tunnel. A mole wouldn't
likely do this if the lawn was not infested with tasty grubs of some kind,
as skimming just under the surface makes them vulnerable to predators or
just to dogs.

As for the mole mounds of dirt per se, that is just where they are
emptying out their tunnels pushing soil to the surface. Mole hills aren't
part of the tunnels & are not used for exits. Their entrance/exit will be
much more difficult to spot.

-paggers
--
Get your Paghat the Ratgirl T-Shirt he
http://www.paghat.com/giftshop.html
"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to
liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot." -Thomas Jefferson

Bill,

Whatever is digging around, they are part of the natural system. These
mammals are plowing the earth while you sleep.
Plant something they like to eat in the areas you want them to dig and lead
them away from favorites.
Gophers and moles are harmless and never over populate. When food gets
scarce they move on.

Nature will eventually decompose your carcass too.

If you must, there is a gopher plant which repels burrowing mammals. It is a
lovely plant, dark green and is hardy in California.

Later

On Sat, 29 Oct 2005 05:53:25 GMT, Dotting Doyler wrote:
Gophers and moles are harmless and never over populate. When food gets
scarce they move on.

Nonsense.

As a natural system they WILL ALWAYS overpopulate when food is
plentiful. When food gets scarce they die of starvation. THAT IS THE
NATURAL CYCLE.

rabbits, gophers, moles, squirrels, coyotes, wolves, snakes, mice, deer,
people, and etc. all go thru those cycles.

As for gophers in the lawn and garden I've had some success trying one
or both of traps and poison bait. The rodenator looks like loads of fun
though. Even more fun now that I'm battling a gopher that is
turning my front garden into the appearance of a minefield.

sdb

--
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On Sat, 5 Nov 2005 16:49:26 GMT, Janet Baraclough wrote:
The message
from sylvan butler contains
these words:

On Sat, 29 Oct 2005 05:53:25 GMT, Dotting Doyler
wrote:
Gophers and moles are harmless and never over populate. When food gets
scarce they move on.

Nonsense.

As a natural system they WILL ALWAYS overpopulate when food is
plentiful. When food gets scarce they die of starvation. THAT IS THE
NATURAL CYCLE.

rabbits, gophers, moles, squirrels, coyotes, wolves, snakes, mice, deer,
people, and etc. all go thru those cycles.

Not quite.

Yes, quite.

Moles are highly territorial and solitary, and no matter
how much food is available, they won't populate an area more densely.

The population grows to fit the food. An individual mole's territory
shrinks to the defensible size, which size is determined in part by
population pressure aka competition.

Humans do the very opposite of "overpopulate when food is plentiful".

You are mistaken.

Where food is plentiful, as in the affluent west, children are likelier
to survive and the breeding rate drops.

Yes, however that is an abberant behavior caused (most likely) by
factors outside of the food-life cycle. Most oft referenced factors
include education, selfishness and/or greed, as well as the shift from
agrarian to industrial society causing a shift in the value of progeny
from asset to liability. Look where those factors are not present and
you will see the food-life cycle follows true in humans as well.

In most of Europe, more people
die than get born, and populations are falling.

Western Europe anyway. The same is true of the U.S. except that
immigration keeps population rising.

When food is short, as in parts of the third world, women produce more
children, not fewer; so even though life expectancy is very short, the
population is increasing not falling.

And what happens in between those extremes? Given adequate food (but no
alternatives, education, etc.) to those starving populations for a
generation or two, more babies survive, adults live longer, population
increases, etc. This is evident thru much of China and India as
compared to much of the African continent.

sdb
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