What To Do About Moles...

A key feature of healthy soil is the presence of diverse soil organisms and lots of worms. This offers moles an irresistible buffet of good eats. Are they a problem? What should be done if they are?

I love nature, and often I try to mimic the way nature works in my garden because I find the plants like nature too - but sometimes nature loves me back a little too much - and this was the case when I first started noticing moles in my garden.

What are moles?

Source: https://pixabay.com/photos/nature-animal-mole-rodent-mammal-13298/

Moles are funny looking littlie mammals that resemble rodents in size and shape, but are not rodents at all - instead belonging to the family Talpidae. They have tapered snouts, big paws, short powerful forelimbs, and very small hindlimbs. These unique adaptations allow them to almost swim through soil. In fact, despite their small size, they are supposed to be able to tunnel at a rate of about 15 feet per hour. For the sake of scale - if I (at about 193cm long) could tunnel like a mole (which are about 12 cm long) - I could tunnel about 241 feet in an hour. That’s almost a football field! In terms of diet - while they are technically omnivorous, their diet consists mostly of earthworms and other invertebrates like slugs and grubs.

How do I know if I have them?

Moles are notorious for making many large tunnels underground. One indicator is the telltale molehills they leave behind from their tunneling (all that soil has to go somewhere). It is also the case that near the molehills the ground will be hollow in places, such that it will collapse a few inches when stepped upon.