Seeing tunnels in your yard? There are two types of varmints that can be lurking under your lawn. Knowing the difference between the two will increase your ability to treat for these pesky creatures.

The mole (pictured on the left) is a insectivore. This means their primary diet is consuming earthworms, grubs, and some other insects. The vole (pictured on the right) is a plant eater. He will feed on grass, seeds, perennial-flower roots, and bulbs.

Moles have a tendency to be “loners”. You will only see one or two active moles in a yard at a time. Their paddle shaped feet are perfect for digging. These mammals can eat up to their weight every day and are able to dig tunnels at 1 foot per minute causing close to 100 feet of tunnel in one day. A mole’s life span is about 2 to 3 years.

There are several ways to prevent moles. To help keep them away from your lawn you can treat for their favorite food, the grub. By putting a grub control application on your lawn in June or July it will decrease the amount or completely deplete the amount of grub you have in your lawn. However, the main diet for the mole is earthworms. If your lawn is saturated with earthworms, the mole will see it as a continuous buffet and keep returning.

Voles on the other hand, are rodents. They look a lot like mice but have shorter tails. The voles create surface tunnels near walls, mulch, flower beds. Their life span is short, it consists of only 16 months or less.

To prevent voles from tunneling into existing flower beds, you can make a channel a few inches out from the bed and make a mixture of soil and a tiny bit of gravel to discourage the vole from traveling through the channel. To keep them away from young trees and shrubs you can wrap a hardware cloth around the base of the tree or shrub to keep them from chewing the bark.

If you have issues with a mole(s), please contact us and we can help treat your active moles. We can put you on our Mole Patrol and our technicians will actively treat for active moles every time we are servicing your lawn by putting mole bait down in active runs. To treat for moles, we must be currently servicing your lawn with our lawn care program.