Prairie Lawn Critters and Pests

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MOLES AND GOPHERS

Conventional practice is to eliminate moles by poisoning or trapping them, and then to rely on insecticides to eradicate the grubs once kept under control by the moles. This is overkill, and there are friendlier ways to deal with the problem.

You can spray your lawn with BT (bacillus thuringensis), a bacterium that kills off caterpillars of all varieties but harms nothing else. With no grubs to hunt, moles will soon move on. You can also infect your soil with milky spore disease, which kills Japanese beetle grubs and some others. For this to work, however, you have to convince all your neighbors to do it too, otherwise the beetles will fly in from their yards to decimate your roses.

As is so often true, it's best to let nature take its course: Let the moles work for you. They'll happily feast on all the grubs you don't want in your lawn, such as the sod web worms that girdle corn seedlings and create dry patches in your lawn by eating the grass' tender stems. Moles will also rid your turf of the cutworms that snip off your laboriously raised tomato and broccoli seedlings, as well as the larvae of Japanese beetles and other pests that will attack your flowers and vegetable plants in their voracious adult stage.

The problem, of course, is the network of lumpy nests and tunnels moles leave in their wake. A healthy mole can burrow ten to 15 feet an hour, and in a solitary night a couple of moles can make a real mess of your lawn and garden. Moles seldom harm garden plants, but their rifling of the soil will expose grass and other plant roots to air, which will cause them to dry out and die. The solution: First thing in the morning, give the lawn a good soak and smooth it over with a lawn roller. The sod will reroot just fine.

A more aggressive measure is to acquire and train a mole hound - any digging breed of hunting dog will do. Dachshunds, bred to hunt ferrets, and beagles, trained to flush out rabbit warrens, are ideal. Our best mole hounds have been German shepherds. Though not great diggers by nature, shepherds trace along tunnels to where the moles are active and flip them out with a swipe of the paw.

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