If you’ve started to notice signs of tunneling in your yard, there’s a good chance that you have a mole infestation. For the most part, moles are small, harmless mammals that spend their lives beneath human notice. But they can also become nuisance pests.
In this case, you’ll likely find yourself wondering how to get rid of moles. When this happens, several solutions are available to you. With some research, you can figure out the mole removal method that’s best for your property.
What Are Moles?
Moles are mammals in the Talpidae family. This family is made up of 17 genera and 42 species of moles and desmans — the mole’s aquatic cousins. These animals are found throughout most of:
- North America
- Europe
- Asia
You can find a number of different species of moles in the U.S. alone. One of the most common is the eastern mole, which goes by the scientific name Scalopus aquaticus.
Moles are small mammals that are often mistaken for mice and shrews. Most species are fossorial moles. This means that they spend most of their lives within underground tunnels that they dig themselves.
You can tell from their appearance that these species have spent hundreds of thousands of years adapting to life underground. They have very small eyes that are sometimes entirely covered by flaps of skin. They can hear, but their ears don’t have any external parts.
Mole animals have very short legs. Their forelegs are great for digging. These limbs are naturally rotated at the elbows — so their palms point toward their rears — and they end in strong claws.
Moles have velvety fur that can lie flat in any direction.
Like shrews, moles have very high metabolisms. This gives them a lot of energy but also means that they have insatiable appetites. They eat day and night all year round. In fact, they can eat 70 percent to 80 percent of their body weight every day.
For the most part, they survive on:
- Adult insects
- Snail larvae
- Spiders
- Small vertebrates
- Earthworms
- Small amounts of vegetation
Why Do Moles Dig Tunnels?
Moles dig tunnels as a way to create their own living space. They can move very efficiently throughout their underground network of tunnels. They use these spaces to hunt for food and quickly move around.
Their shallow travel tunnels might only be used once. But they also dig larger, more permanent tunnels and deep underground burrows.
Mole hills are mounds of soil that appear on the earth’s surface. They’re caused by the larger digs that are needed to create permanent tunnels and nesting areas.
Moles can tunnel through many different environments, but they prefer moist soil. You can find them building tunnels throughout:
Are Moles Bad for Your Yard?
Moles don’t usually cause a lot of expensive damage to your property. Instead, they’re more of a nuisance pest. For example, they can create problems throughout your yard with their extensive network of tunnels. These problems include:
- Ridges that interfere with lawnmowers
- Brown spots where they cut off your grass’s roots
- Eating creatures that could benefit your garden, like earthworms and pollinators
- Disrupting your garden plants with their digging — luckily, they don’t like to eat things like bulbs and other garden plants or they’d be much more of a bother
Signs of Moles in Yard
Mole tunnels look like ridges of upturned soil on your lawn’s surface. To effectively deal with your mole problem, you’ll need to find the shallow tunnels that they’re using on a regular basis. These are known as active tunnels.
Avoid molehills if you’re looking for an active tunnel. These don’t lead to the kind of tunnel that’s effective for trapping. Instead, keep an eye out for any newly formed ridges.
Once you’ve found a ridge, you can step down on a patch of it so the soil flattens out. Then check the ridge the next day. If the soil has been raised back up, you know that moles are actively using the tunnel.
How to Get Rid of Moles in Your Yard
There are a wide variety of techniques that you can try once you’ve decided to tackle your mole problem. But most experts agree that traps are your best bet. The problem is that trapping requires both knowledge and patience in order to work.
If you find that you don’t have enough time to trap your moles, you can also try:
- Applying insecticides to your property to cut down their food supply — just make sure to carefully select your product and read the instruction and safety labels before use
- Using a roller to tightly pack down your soil, making it harder for them to form tunnels
- Applying repellents to bulbs and plants that you want to protect from mole activity
Most experts don’t recommend using toxic bait to take care of your mole problem. You could harm other animals in the environment instead. Plus, many baits include seeds and other foods that moles rarely consume.
If you do decide to trap these pests, you’ll next have to decide on the best trap to use. Harpoon-style traps are some of the easiest to both find and use. The steps for setting up one of these traps are as follows:
- Compress — or push down on — a small part of an active tunnel.
- Deeply insert the legs of your trap so that they straddle the tunnel and penetrate a good way into the ground. Move to a different spot if the soil is too loose to firmly plant the legs.
- Gently pull the string on your harpoon trap multiple times to make sure that rocks or other debris aren’t blocking the tines.
- Press on the trip pan until it touches the compressed soil and make sure that it engages the trap’s set lever. This could require using a lot of pressure in your push.
- Pull the harpoon’s sting far enough to engage the set lever and trip pan.
- Double-check that the trap is still firmly rooted in the soil.
- Check on the trap every day and dig it up when it springs.
- Move the trap to a new location or try setting it up again if several days pass and it doesn’t spring.
You can always consult or hire an expert pest removal service if you don’t want to deal with your mole problem by yourself. Overall, moles aren’t the worst pest that could invade your yard, but they tend to be difficult to get rid of.