Mole Tips for Homeowners
What the homeowner should and shouldn’t do.
- The homeowner should keep the grass short and well manicured. This will make spotting new mole tunnels much easier.
- The homeowner should walk the lawn with the sun in your face to catch new mole activity. Mole tunnels usually cast a distinct shadow through the lawn.
- The homeowner should NOT put sod or top soil over mole tunnels. It will add a new dimension to the tunnel system and make spotting tunnels next to impossible.
When to trap?
Early fall and early spring are effective times. Populations are lower and damage is more visible before lawn grasses grow too tall in the spring or are covered with leaves in the fall. Early fall trapping eliminates moles before they move deeper in the winter and begin to reopen old tunnels. Early spring trapping captures the moles before new litters are born.
Late fall and winter the worst times of the year and when things are cold and the ground hardens there is not much mole activity anyway. Heavy rains cause the soil to solidify around the trap making them non-functional. And with the winter free-thaw cycle, traps will start to trigger on their own. When moles are in the tunnels it stops other moles from entering so late fall and winter tend to be non-productive times for trapping and does not benefit the homeowner.
Amazing Mole Facts
Because of specialized bone and muscle construction, moles can exert a lateral digging force equivalent to 32 times its body weight. In proportion, a 150 lb. Man would be able to exert a 4800 lb lateral force for moles to dig one meter of tunnel requires up to 4,000 times as much energy as does walking for the same distance on the ground surface.A 5-ounce mole consumes up to 50 pounds of worms and insects per year.A mole’s surface or tunneling probes can be dug at about 18 feet per hour. A mole can run through existing tunnels at about 80 feet per minute.Moles contain twice as much blood and twice as many red blood cells as other mammals of similar size, allowing the mole to breath without any distress in an underground environment of low oxygen and high carbon dioxide.
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