On 20/4/07 18:05, in article ,
"Chris Hogg" wrote:

My mother has a very neat and tidy garden of which she is justifiably
proud (she is 87 and suffers quite badly from arthritis). But from
time to time, especially in dry weather it seems, her lawn gets dug up
by what she says are badgers. It's either badgers or foxes. Whichever,
during the night her lawn gets covered in small holes, like golfer's
divots, where some animal has presumably been digging for worms. The
neighbours suffer the same problem.

I think badgers would make a lot more mess than that.

Is there a anything she can scatter to deter them? The garden is well
fenced and there's no obvious sign of where they come in, although
they may come over the front wall, about 4ft high. Recently she's
tried painting bits of wood and odd lumps of concrete with (proper)
creosote and leaving them around the garden in the hope that the smell
would deter whatever it is, but to no avail.

Any suggestions? (She doesn't have access to lion dung!)

She could try the water scarer mentioned in the What's the best thing to
keep cats outs....? thread but she'd need to be sure to remember to turn it
off each morning so it doesn't get her! If it's only for a shortish period
each year, can she learn to live with it on the grounds that it's a hungry
animal looking for food - sort of 'learn to love your personal wildlife'?
--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
http://www.discoverdartmoor.co.uk/
(remove weeds from address)