Fauna and other natural things

[apl68]

A critter (unknown) dug up a 7ft by 7ft section of my back lawn last night, leaving dozens of small piles of dirt.

Sounds like an armadillo.  They're very hard to trap or otherwise drive away. 

Lately my parents have been dealing with a plague of armadillos digging up their yard.  Dad has taken to using their Chihuahua to sniff them out in the evenings and then shoot them.  I'm told he got one just last night.

[Catherder]

Unlikely. I'm way too far north for an armadillo.  A mole? A badger?

[apl68]

Unlikely. I'm way too far north for an armadillo.  A mole? A badger?

I thought "armadillo" because that's the usual suspect here.  It could be several other kinds of digging critters. 

With warming climate conditions the armadillos are expanding their range aggressively.  If you don't have them now, don't rule out the possibility of seeing them someday....

[FishProf]

Could be a skunk if you have grubs.

[ab_grp]

Could be a skunk if you have grubs.

We had some experience with this, unfortunately.  The exterminator pointed out how the ground feels when there are grubs.  It was kind of squishy? It didn't have the same firmness as other parts of the lawn.

[Catherder]

My neighbour reports grubs so I probably have them. It's a section of lawn I don't usually walk on (dead centre) so squishy is possible.

[FishProf]

If you pull up a section of turf, the grubs are big white caterpillar looking things (and they can be big, size of a nectarine, for example).

If so, you can apply nematodes.  Better than poison as they kill the grubs by breeding in them and then are released at death to get the next ones.

[clean]

In South Carolina I had Japanese Beetles.  The grubs eat the grass.  You could tell you had them because you could take a rake and essentially rake up your lawn.  the grubs ate so much of the roots that there was little holding the grass to the ground. IF you moved some grass and then took a hoe or small shovel and turned the dirt you could pull out a lot of them.

The cure for me was a product called Milky Spore.  I dont know if its effectiveness was limited to the Japanese beetle grub, but it was something that infected the grub like a fungus or something and once applied, it stayed in the ground waiting for the next batch of grubs to emerge.  I think that some neighbors applied it a few times to make sure, but I didnt live there long enough for multiple attempts.

At my current house, I know that I had a batch of grubs from June Bugs I think. It was the same problem... grass essentially dies, then you pull it up in clumps, and if you raked the soil under, there were grubs galore!  My neighbors have lost a lot of their grass.

I applied a Beyer poison for them, as I could not find Milky Spore in this part of the country (either becuase it is not effective, or not yet been made popular here.

I would suggest another possible source of the small dirt piles :  Squirrels.  Might they be burrying or searching for their stash?

[Catherder]

Tks Clean and Fishprof. The lawn is pretty healthy. Even if there are grubs, it's the size of a football field so nematodes might be too ambitious.  Whatever did this did it at night, so probably not squirrels. And the dirt piles are too big for squirrels.  I'm thinking moles.

Unfortunately it's too dark out there at night to catch the culprits at work.

[FishProf]

Moles can be driven away with ultrasonic noise. 

[clean]

iN my experience, moles leave tunnels, so you can see a 'trail' of pushed up dirt.

[Catherder]

iN my experience, moles leave tunnels, so you can see a 'trail' of pushed up dirt.

Yup! That's exactly what I see.

[aside]

This morning, my dog encountered a large toad on our walk.  After a good sniff, they went their separate ways.

Tonight on our walk, I saw a large owl in the twilight sky passing right overhead.  Too dark to provide further details, but it was huge!

[FishProf]

My car and I ENCOUNTERED a bullfrog hopping across the road in the rain.  I swerved, he hopped. 

No thump.

So all seems to be well in our respective worlds.

[apl68]

A lizard ran into my house a couple of evenings ago.  I tried to catch it.  It left its tail wriggling in my hand.  Then it darted under a couch.  Rather than dive under and try to find it there, I just sat down in a nearby chair.  After a bit I saw it trying to climb the wall toward the window sill.  I caught it in a plastic container and released it outside.  Hopefully I didn't hurt it in the scuffle.

Wonder how long it will take to regenerate its tail?