Moles and how NOT to get rid of them.

Last years freshly laid lawn, didn’t last long, due to the effects of our Summer showers and the rather persistent mole gang that wait in line to wreak havoc.  I tried the solar sticks that – ‘create a low-frequency vibration in the soil that spreads out within the target area’ alerting the mole to the fact that some other mole dude is on his patch (apparently moles are solitary creatures- they’ve obviously never visited my garden of an evening where it’s reminiscent of a mole convention) and so ‘no room at the inn.’

All that happened was, they, quite politely, dug around the solar stick, quite possibly in a gang formation!! Still not au fait with wanting to kill the (so they tell me) impossibly cute visitors, I decided to infiltrate the runs and deposit some odious substance.

Mole Repellents

There are many recommendations for this ranging from :-

1. cheese
2. dried grass soaked in ripe milk or yoghurt
3. mixture of oil, cayenne pepper and warm water
4. dry ice

Now I’m not sure about you, but it’s not often I have dry ice on my asda shopping list and the last time I looked, my garden shed hadn’t been turned into a lab! So I started with option 1. It didn’t go well, it seems that the South Bucks moles have a rather human like palate and every bit of cheese I laid down was eaten with relish, and quite possibly a worm or two! Figuring the leftover cheddar wasn’t smelly enough I threw down some ripe brie which I’m sure was detectable from the noses of the people on shores of the Dordogne, let alone by a few blind rodents. Again, no joy.

Try, Try and Try Again

The next 2 steps (dry ice- really!!!), weren’t successful. The dried grass mixture just got thrown up on the bit of lawn that wasn’t a hill, and the oil, pepper mixture was mistaken as salad dressing by Son number 2 (age, not preference), who spent the rest of the day writhing in discomfort on the loo. Back to google, and ‘flushing the tunnels out’ with washing up liquid, seemed a viable option. Problem was though, there were so many tunnels I didn’t know where to start. I decided against the suggestion of walking the route, sitting on a chair in stealth mode, and trapping them with a shovel each side. Because I:- 1-  don’t have enough patience to wait for the next episode of a netflix series without pressing the play button, and 2- I wouldn’t be able to pick a mole up, even with double braced, super strength marigolds. ewwwww.

So, “what did you end up doing”?- I hear you all cry

Ripped the lawn up and laid down heavily backed astro turf. So now instead of turf chomping, hill making creatures all over the garden, I have ball bouncing, goal scoring grandson and his mates.

Bonus ????  

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

Image by H. Hach from Pixabay