I have moles tunneling under my patio block sidewalk and causing it to sink. I do not use any chemicals for pests, since the chemicals are usually more harmful than the pests. I am looking for a non-chemical substance to put in their tunnels to either kill them or repel them. I prefer a natural substance such as a toxic plant. I WILL also use something like diesel or another petroleum product, just not poisonous chemicals.
Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance.
Yeah, rethink your definition of "poisonous chemicals". That includes petroleum products. You never heard of soil pollution? Groundwater pollution?
Oh, and moles don't eat plants. They eat bugs.
snipped-for-privacy@myplace.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
To answer your question: What you need is a trench around your porch 4 feet or more deep. Put heavy duty wire mesh with sufficiently small openings that a mole can't get through (1/2 inch should be fine enough) in there and anchor with concrete footings. Fill in the trench. There are also mole traps you can buy (LeeValley.com ??), but they may not help enough, because there are apparently dlectable bugs under your porch.
I'm cranky, but don't let that affect you. If you think diesel or toxic plants are fine, but poisonous chemicals are not, you should go and get your tuition payments and school expenses reimbursed, because your schools failed to educate you.
That's hard to believe, given the size of your average mole and the amount of earth that they'd have to excavate in order to destabilize patio blocks of arbitrary size.
And I wouldn't expect them to build a home under a high-traffic, high-exposure area.
Give them something else to burrow under.
Or get a cat. One of our cats usually bring us 4 or 5 moles a year (from our back yard). I must say that moles (unlike mice) are particularly nasty - they universally refuse to be taken alive.
Run a hose from your lawn mower's exhaust to a mole hole. Run the machine for fifteen minutes every day. With a long enough hose, you do this while you cut the grass.
Poke some lumps of calcium carbide down the hole as far as possible. Squirt some water in the hole. Cover the entrance for five minutes. Open the entrance and fling a match down the hole.
This latter may not kill any moles, but the exploding acetylene should level your sidewalk.
Our local State extension agent told us the most effective means is patience and mole-traps. She said she had had marginal success with most poisons; but flooding was a long shot approach.
The mole(s) had shown up overnight and and already produced 4-5 mounds with some visible tunnels. Before I sprang for a trap, I tried flooding. Poked the hose in all of the mound openings and then ran it into one of the more visible tunnels. I had water coming from all of the visible mounds and tunnels (about 30 minutes work). No more moles!
RonB
You were lucky. Most burrowing animals usually make at least one none-floodable tunnel, either a hideout or an escape tunnel, higher than the others.
I already tried to flood them out in other places around here. Seems they just go into another tunnel. I once stuck a hose in a tunnel and left it run for 2 or 3 hours. Later that day the water finally started to come out of the ground at least 200 feet downhill, and there is a barn in between. Past the barn I could see some sections of tunnel collapse after I turned the water on again. But the moles came back.....
I do sort of like the idea about the exhaust from a lawn mower..... I think I heard that mentioned somewhere before too.
I should mention I bought a trap for about $15. Biggest waste of $15 I can think of. And it was in a major tunnel area directly into a tunnel. Just like the instructions said.
I have cats, they dont seem to catch them often. I did see a cat get one mole earlier in the spring. No thanks on the dogs. They dig larger holes than the moles and I cant stand barking.
Yea I know petroleum is poisonous, but not in the same sense as cancer causing chemicals. I dont intend to dump gallons of it, just a half cupful or so to burn them out. But I think the mower exhaust sounds like a better idea..... Taht way there's no actual fire, just the smoke which is what I wanted to achieve. I even have the perfect mower, the old worn-out engine burns lots of oil......
I have very good results with the mole bait poison. It's zinc phosphate. I don't understand it but they eat it. But you didn't want to use poison. Given dumping petroleum verses putting a little bait in their tunnels I think the bait solution is less offensive. But you can't let dogs get at it though, apparently they will eat it too.
Nothing else worked for me.
Exhaust fumes contains chemicals, some poisonous.
You're going about this all bass ackwards.
- gpsman
On 7/25/2011 9:48 PM, RonB wrote: ...
Moles rarely if ever make a mound; their runs generally are shallow enough that the tunnels just leaving a raised surface in continuous runs is generally the symptom.
Many mounds and a few tunnel tracks (maybe) is sign of pocket gophers; they burrow deeper and break through leaving a sizable mound a place or two every pair most nights while active.
If look at those mounds carefully, you can generally find the plug where they've refilled the egress hole; remove that carefully and you can open into the tunnel w/o disturbing it. When do so, place some bait in the tunnel, again being careful to not seriously disturb the dirt. IME, that's nearly foolproof; they'll either take it and be killed or they will depart the area.
Being able to put enough water down a system to bother is rarely effective; unless it's a new system they will have already built air locks to prevent flooding; after all, they've survived heavy rains and flooding for millenia; they either read the engineering manuals or have good instincts, I'm not sure which... :)
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gpsman wrote in news:11bdb051-c9b9-4589-a307- snipped-for-privacy@h14g2000yqd.googlegroups.com:
ROTFLMAO
I was probably lucky. But this occurred during the spring when the soil was already good and wet. Getting the tunnel network flooded was pretty easy.
RonB
I know somebody uses oxy/act combo and gets rid of his groundhogs. Kinda like Caddy shack.
Greg
On 7/26/2011 9:51 AM, Bob F wrote: ...
That seems _most_ peculiar as, as another noted, they feed on earthworms and to lesser degree grubs and other insects that generally are feeding of sod roots, etc., that are only a few inches below grade.
The deeper runs are the permanent ones but I rarely if ever see moles actually mound. OTOH, we are run over w/ the pocket gophers that only appear in mounds their tunnels are deep enough never see the traces of them on the surface. The gophers are stout enough they even just pop up through the gravel roads that are packed quite hard, obviously. It's a real shock-absorber test to hit one of those mounds if can't avoid it owing to traffic (or not paying much attention being more like it :) )...
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