Conference 7.286::home_work

    Make it less profitable to sell government secrets.
    

    Teabury gum.. or any sweet gum. Leave it by/in their hole. The
    moles/shrews will chew it and eat it. Their can not digest the gum
    and die.
    
    
         REK

For any of you who didn't respond because they assumed this would be 
write-locked: it isn't.  We have several notes about trying to identify hole 
diggers, and there's info on moles in some of those notes, but no notes 
specifically on moles.

Have at it.

Paul

There are lots of notes regarding mole problems in PICA::GARDEN (KP7 or SELECT).
Take a look at the directory in note 1.2.

    Also check PICA::GARDEN, this topic has been discussed there in
    exhausting detail.
    
    ep

    
     > Make it less profitable to sell government secrets.
    
    Actually, it *is* ridiculously unprofitable!  I don't know why these
    guys just don't get a side job as a car salesman or something. 

    I can't resist "I think we are making a mountain out of a mole hill!"
    
    :^)
    
    Anyways I have used GUM on other rodents and it seems to work.

    I'll loan you my cat. She kills them by the numbers, brings them
    to the front door for all to see and me to pick up. She doesn't
    do anything gross like eating half or anything like that. She's
    also cheap........Two cans of any fish type cat food per day and
    the use of the back of any child's/adult's legs to curl up by.
    
    Ken 

    I recently (last fall) cleared approx 2400 sq ft. of former brush
    infested land adjacent to my yard. Once cleared, leveled, loamed, I
    figured it was ready for grass seed etc... Well what to my wondering
    eyes should appear, but mole trails, and tunnels, everywhere! I
    simply sat there waiting to locate an active tunnel (burrowing action
    at end of tunnel), and dropped a basketball sized boulder on the
   " burrowing action area ". After several of these droppings, I have
    eliminated the mole problem.
    It was easier to locate the tunnels as there was no lawn in place,
    and the rasied soil was a dead (pun), giveaway.     -bd-

    My father tried *everything*, including a lot of old country "remedies"
    with varying results:
    
    -  poison: moles seemed to become imune (good, because my father
    hated using the stuff anyway,
    
    -  putting brambles or rose prunings in the run. Moles are supposed
    to be haemphilic, so would bleed to death.  This wasn't any more
    successful,
    
    -  one old man in the village suggested that since moles were highly
    intelligent, all one had to do was write them a note asking them
    to please dig elsewhere, place the paper in a run, and they'd go
    away.  My sister and I tried this one, but it didn't work.  
    We must have had illiterate moles!                                 
                                           
    -  finally, the solution.  MOLE TRAPS.  Don't know whether they
    are actually legal, since my father got his from a very old gamekeeper,
    but they consist of two pieces of steel, held together in an X-form,
    with a piece of sprung steel at one end.  You push the ends together,
    set the trap and put it in a run.  The mole is supposed to be killed
    immediately when the "jaws" of the trap come together around its
    neck.
    
    I hate my father using mole traps, but he says they're at least
    quicker and more humane than poison or bleeding to death. He reckons
    to get a couple of moles a year, and at least now has grass that
    resembles a lawn.                
                                                     
                     

    
        
    .10> -  one old man in the village suggested that since moles were highly
    .10> intelligent, all one had to do was write them a note asking them
    .10> to please dig elsewhere, place the paper in a run, and they'd go
    .10> away.  My sister and I tried this one, but it didn't work.  
    .10> We must have had illiterate moles!
    
    Moles are highly intelligent, but they're virtually *blind*.
    Next time, write the note in BRAILLE!

Moles eat Japanese Beetle grubs.  Get rid of the grubs, and the moles will
move to your neighbor's lawn.  (Convince your neighbors to get rid of grubs
and maybe your trees will survive the summer, too.)

An insecticide such as Spectricide 6000 (active ingredient Diazinon) will
kill the grubs, as well as ants, earwigs, cutworms, and other nasty insects.

    
    
    	I have tried using Clark's Teaberry Gum in the runs.  (They love
    the smell)Roll it up so that you get a thin root-like structure.  Jam it 
    in along a run, in a few places.  The gum doesn't break downin a mole
    belly. 
    The mole feels(is) full all of the time, and will soon expire.  Not for
    animal rights activists, but effective.  Keep it in the foil paper
    while twisting to keep human stink off.
         

    Mouse traps baited with raw ground beef works, I had them digging
    into a dirt celler. Put the traps out killed the pair, blocked up
    the holes.
    
                  Ed

    Someone suggested moth balls.  So I put moth balls down all the
    holes I could find.  Yep, moles don't like moth balls.  Next morning
    I went out and found all the mothballs a few inches from each of the
    holes they had been put down.  In the end I found that treating the
    lawn for grubs was very effective.  
    						- Vick