Mice or other rodents

Okay we have severl brown looking mice type rodents. They are killing our grass outside! They build holes and tunnels under the sod. Anyone know what they are (Voles? Field Mice?) and what we can do to protect our lawns?

 

Those would be moles... You have to dump some sort of poison on your lawn and gardens to get rid of the grubs. Moles like to eat the grubs. You know, the Japanese beetles that come up later this year...
Go to Betty's Azalea Ranch (on rt 29 near the FFx co pkway) and talk to them about what to do. They are the best place and very helpful and knowledgeable.
Forget the dumb traps, there are hundreds of moles, you just have to get rid of their favorite food so they will go to your neighbors yard. They will eat your roots too (the moles, not your neighbors)

 

Actually, if you have seen the critters, they are probably not moles. Moles stay underground and chomp on the grubs. they do not eat roots, although they aren't particular about digging through them. If there are tunnels where you can see pushed up soil and the tunnels are 3-4 inches wide it might be moles. If they critters are mouse-sized, but like to tunnel through the mulch and leave paths in the grass, you might have voles. Voles eat roots and plants.
I have chipmunks living under my front stoop. Yet another rodent.
http://www.mindspring.com/~guzy/data/moles_voles/moles_voles.htm has a comparison of the critters (with pictures)

 

aaaawwwww. but the chipmunks are so cuuute.
My daughter made a one hour video, some years ago, of the chipmunk family under our front stoop. Mom, dad and six little babies.
It was their first day out on a warm spring day. Very nicely done. I love the chippiemunks!

 

Voles - we have voles - Thanks for the photo comparison. Now what do we do? They are killing clumps of our grass/sod

 

Answer is in the movie Caddy Shack

Try this: Use mouse trap baited with pieces of apple or peanut butter & oats. From the above website.

-Teak

 

We also have voles! They drive us nuts! My husband has tried putting apples, peanut butter and oats in the traps....nothing. The other day - he went to Home Depot and got some traps with sticky stuff on them - voila....the next day we got one!

 

I am a self proclaimed warrior on the battle against voles and moles. I've tried all kinds of weapons of mass distruction on these vial, yard destroying creatures.

Voles are vegitarians, moles eat meaty things, (worms, grubs, bugs, etc.) Unfortunately moles don't eat voles.

Voles are best killed by getting a plastic bait box. It is a small box about the size of a shoe box. Inside has 4 to 6 stakes for poison. The poison comes in cubes with holes in the middle. You slide these poison clubes onto the stakes, close up the box, and place the box in the vicinity of your vole sightings. Voles crawl in eat the poison and then die elsewhere. You'll be amazed at how fast the poison disappears.

As for moles. The only way to get rid of them is to physically execute them. Spring traps are the best. Screwdrives work as well, if you have a quick 10 year old son. They tend to nest underneath trees in the stump roots. The more traps you use the better. Place the traps over the trails you can see in your yard. They should be raised dirt hump trails. Different looking than vole trails. Voles tend to skim across the ground, eating their way through the root system of grass. Moles are deeper.

By the way, when you get your first kill, you will feel like going to the taxidermist. It is quit a thrill.

There are tons of marketing cures for these vermints. None work, from my experience, i.e. grub killer (moles eat other things than just grubs), sonic barriers, sharded gravel, voodoo dolls, juicy fruit gum (this is true, some say, voles eat the gum, can't digest it and die, I tried it, didn't work)

It is likely you have both voles and moles and will have to deploy both offensive tactics.

Good luck, and let us all know of your pending success against this scurge on our yards.

 

So we were told that there is grub killer that works for a year (Bluemont Nursery) and that would get rid of our voles. I do not have the stomach to set traps and don't want to worry about little daughter getting into them.

I hope this stuff works.

 

Just my two cents. I heard about the grub killer from a Nursery and tried it a couple years ago. Didn't work for me, hope it does for you. Let us know.

 

First of all you need to get a mouse trap and then you can put peanut butter on it. Mice of that! If the mice are in your yard, put them all around your house.

 

A suggestion from a guy who did pest control in the military. Use chunky peanut butter and make sure one of the nuts is pushed under the little metal hook built into the trap release. I can't tell you how many people would call us and tell us the traps they laid out were still set and all the peanut butter was gone. The mice will just lick it off, if they have to yank at the nut, it trips the trap.



Neil Z.
Resident since 1999