Carefully maintained lawns and yards attract voles and moles. The more lush and lavish your landscape, the more appealing it is to moles and voles.
If You See Above Ground Passageways, It’s Likely A Vole.
Lawn rodents, also known as voles or meadow mice, are approximately 3 to 5 inches long. Their coats can range in color from brown to gray and they have short tails, short legs and a thick, furry coat.
Lawn rodents create both above-ground and underground passageways in the soil, while feeding mostly on vegetation, causing damage to not only your grass, but also your gardens and flowerbeds.
If you are seeing destructive activity in your lawn in springtime, it is more likely a vole.
Moles Are A More Common Problem In Summer.
Moles are small mammals 5 to 8 inches long with dark gray or brown fur long, narrow snouts, small eyes and no visible ears. Technically, they are insectivores, and are not rodents. Their feet and nose are pink and their front feet are equipped with well-developed claws that allow them to dig rapidly. Moles live almost exclusively underground.
The more lush and lavish your landscape, the more appealing it is to moles. Moles prefer soft, moist soil. Their diet consists of 90% earthworms, 5% grubs, 9% other bugs that venture into their underground tunnels. They do not feed on plant material, but as the moles travel, they tunnel underground, uprooting the soil and exposing roots of trees, shrubs, plants and grass.
Not All Gophers Are Fan Favorites.
Most people know what gophers look like, however pocket gophers do not have stripes like striped gophers (which are really 13 lined ground squirrels) or the Minnesota Golden Gophers.
Pocket gophers get their name from their fur-lined (pocket like) cheek pouches in which food is carried. Most gophers are 4.7 to 12 inches long and have brown fur that often closely matches the color of the soil in which they live. They live in an underground burrow system, often a network of several hundred feet ranging in depth from a few inches to several feet. Some gophers may make 100 or more mounds in a season. Most mounds are made in late summer and fall when digging shallow burrows to get roots for winter. Soil removed from newly made burrows is pushed into mounds on the surface, usually leaving a small horseshoe-like depression on one side of the mound, indicating the direction of the tunnel.