Your recent repair? 2013 - 2020

[daylatedollarshort]

Rat update: Since I put out the steel wool pads soaked in cayenne pepper and the motion lights, we haven't seen any new damage or entry point holes in the vents.

I think based on the open space and corresponding wildlife around our house I can never claim complete victory. But for now at least all vent holes appear to remain plugged with the steel wool pads and the scratching has abated. Thanks to all for your help. I am sure I will be using some of the other suggestions in the future as the rats are probably merely regrouping and coming up with a new action plan as I type.

 

[aja8888]

Rat update: Since I put out the steel wool pads soaked in cayenne pepper and the motion lights, we haven't seen any new damage or entry point holes in the vents.

I think based on the open space and corresponding wildlife around our house I can never claim complete victory. But for now at least all vent holes appear to remain plugged with the steel wool pads and the scratching has abated. Thanks to all for your help. I am sure I will be using some of the other suggestions in the future as the rats are probably merely regrouping and coming up with a new action plan as I type.

Good luck with the rats...as I said way earlier..electricity is the key. (but there are a never ending supply of rats..)

We have a problem (actually around the neighborhood) with moles. It's been in the 70 - 80 F weather-wise and it rained recently so the moles came out in force. Tunnels everywhere...and those guys are hard to discourage. No easy solution from what I can tell.

 

[imoldernu]

Good luck with the rats...as I said way earlier..electricity is the key. (but there are a never ending supply of rats..)

We have a problem (actually around the neighborhood) with moles. It's been in the 70 - 80 F weather-wise and it rained recently so the moles came out in force. Tunnels everywhere...and those guys are hard to discourage. No easy solution from what I can tell.

Volumes have been written about discouraging moles. You are correct!... no easy way to get rid of them. We have a healthy mole population at our camp.

Dreamers say traps... No! Take a peek here... We or our neighbors have tried most of them. https://www.google.com/search?q=mle+traps&newwindow=1&es_sm=122&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=012MVNXkOpOzyASN6ILIDA&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAg&biw=1024&bih=681

Mole pellets? (poison)... No! Vibrators or radios underground? No!... Insecticides a qualified "maybe".

The common mole can tunnel about 150ft/day or more. Most people think they only travel at night, but that's not true... Our greatest success has been patient watching for moving soil and using a pitchfork, but that's time consuming.

While a few days of mole activity can make make molehill mountains, the idea that there are dozens of the critters running around is probably not true, so if you can get one, or a pair, it's possible that may solve the problem... possible... not probable. When we had kids around, stomping the mounds seemed to help, and the moles sometimes moved over to the neighbors yard.

In the early days, tried flooding the ground... dumb!. In recent years, we have learned to live in harmony with nature and the moles. We let the grass grow taller so the mounds are not so obvious.

As to the insecticides... The older (now banned) insecticides DID work, but after using up my hoarded supply, found the new ones seem to be more of a health food for moles.

Good luck!

 

[ronin]

I have the same problem with gophers. There are a zillion of them and now that the rains have softened up the ground they are going nuts. Tried everything and have essentially given up at this point.

When I had Rotts, I trained them to sniff 'em out and alert me by digging. Then I'd flush them out and smack em with a shovel. Worked well for a time. Big mistake... dogs would dig all night and the property looked like it was carpet bombed.

 

[MRG]

Agree with Imoldernu's post, if you want to try the only thing I got to work it's this.

I actually had some luck trapping them with the Victor plunge style traps. This was after studying a little book that I can no longer find. It is not easy, you really have to spend a lot of time studying these pests. I had a dog who was very helpful at pointing sign out.

The link is to a university's site, seems like it contains all I remember from the book. The keys were identification of the correct run(s) and proper placement of the trap, particularly the trigger.

http://easttexasgardening.tamu.edu/homegardens/moles.html


There's also some links to resources at the bottom. Good information. Of course other moles in the area are happy to move into the vacated feeding areas.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Early Retirement Forum mobile app

 

[daylatedollarshort]

Good luck with the rats...as I said way earlier..electricity is the key. (but there are a never ending supply of rats..)

We have a problem (actually around the neighborhood) with moles. It's been in the 70 - 80 F weather-wise and it rained recently so the moles came out in force. Tunnels everywhere...and those guys are hard to discourage. No easy solution from what I can tell.

We have found the battery operated mole movers from Amazon to help. They are stakes in the ground that shake and make annoying sounds continually so the moles move on to your neighbor's yard.

 

[aja8888]

We have found the battery operated mole movers from Amazon to help. They are stakes in the ground that shake and make annoying sounds continually so the moles move on to your neighbor's yard.

Thanks, I'll have a look at those.

 

[Walt34]

We have found the battery operated mole movers from Amazon to help. They are stakes in the ground that shake and make annoying sounds continually so the moles move on to your neighbor's yard.

Well gee, that's not very neighborly!

 

[daylatedollarshort]

Well gee, that's not very neighborly!

Well, I guess they can move on to parks or open space or whatever you live near. I just know we stick them near the mounds in our yard and whatever is tunneling seems to move on to some place less annoying to them.

 

[aja8888]

Ten bucks...Mole Chaser....Harbor Freight.



Solar powered, too!

 

[Texas Proud]

Ten bucks...Mole Chaser....Harbor Freight.

View attachment 20639

Solar powered, too!

What about opossums

 

[NW-Bound]

Speaking of moles, I still remember my experience with one in a previous home more than 30 years ago.

My home front yard was terribly torn up by a mole digging under the Tiff lawn that I carefully planted. I tried a few things, and nothing worked. One time, I was gas bombing them, and my neighbor came out to watch.

After a few minutes, he cried out "OMG". We saw smoke coming out from his yard, actually under one of his yucca shrubs. This was about 50 feet from where I was gas bombing. So, he went back to his yard, and discovered that the mole already ate all of his yucca's roots, and the plant flopped over when he touched it.

So, I gave up on the mole. And then, one day all activities stopped. Either it moved on, or got caught by a neighborhood cat or an owl.

 

[bjorn2bwild]

Speaking of moles........the mole already ate all of his yucca's roots, and the plant flopped over when he touched it.

That little varmint was a gopher, far more destructive in my experience. Plus a tad easier to deal with. Moles are carnivorous.

 

[NW-Bound]

Thanks for the correction. You are indeed correct, as a Web site says that "A mole's diet primarily consists of earthworms and other small invertebrates found in the soil, and a variety of nuts.", and as we already established that this burrowing animal ate plant roots, it was definitely a gopher.

I am just glad that my above encounter with either one has not repeated.

 

[daylatedollarshort]

FYI - Not to try to out do anyone in terms of yard critter destruction, but our rats ate right through the outer walls of this Biostack compost bin:


We put wire on the bottom to keep out critters per the instructions and they said not a problem. We'll just gnaw right through the sides.

 

[MRG]

What about opossums

To control or bbq?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Early Retirement Forum mobile app

 

[Ronstar]

Not much of a repair - DW's Garmin wasn't getting some states. Found out that the new map update demands more memory than her device has. Took one of my GoPro micro SD cards, formatted it, put it into the Garmin, re-uploaded the new maps and all is well

 

[imoldernu]

Worse than, and smarter than moles:

Pocket Gophers!
Almost impossible to get rid of. Look for the map of the underground system. They dig "safe" compartments... Images:

https://www.google.com/search?q=pocket+gopher+mound&newwindow=1&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=NZSNVPuCJ5D_yQSr04DwCw&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1024&bih=681
Years ago, my neighbor in Florida... frustrated by huge mounds and continuous digging decided to drown the little guy. Ran his garden hose for three days straight, and got rid of the him.
... for three days... New mound on the fourth.

 

[zinger1457]

Not much of a repair - DW's Garmin wasn't getting some states. Found out that the new map update demands more memory than her device has. Took one of my GoPro micro SD cards, formatted it, put it into the Garmin, re-uploaded the new maps and all is well

Lucky that you have a SD card option. I have a similar problem with my one year old TomTom. Unfortunately it doesn't have a memory card slot and since the full maps won't fit I'm forced to load partial maps (zones).

 

[MRG]

Lucky that you have a SD card option. I have a similar problem with my one year old TomTom. Unfortunately it doesn't have a memory card slot and since the full maps won't fit I'm forced to load partial maps (zones).

I had a similar issue with nuvi. Of course it happened the day we wanted to leave. Just used cell phone for that trip. But what Garmin support told me was priceless.

The SD cards are slow so they download the map to your hard drive, then another asynchronous process writes the map data to the SD card. The tech I talked with suggested it might take several more hours for all the map data to be copied to the SD card. This was after the Garmin application said it was done.

He showed me in windows how to watch the I/O activity(process monitor->devices) to the SD card so I knew it was done. Sure enough about 2 hours after the interface said it was done, I/O to that drive stopped.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Early Retirement Forum mobile app

 

[Sunset]

If the pan is dry, try spraying that rubbery Flex Seal into the pan:

As Seen on TV Flex Seal - Walmart.com

+1 idea.

I used something similar to this, automotive spray rubber type of undercoating to waterproof a fiberglass patch inside a car trunk. Got it at Menard's (auto stores would have it).

It did not smell after 1-2 days of drying.
I would not use roofing tar/patch as that stuff smells for a long time like months.

 

[Sunset]

FYI - Not to try to out do anyone in terms of yard critter destruction, but our rats ate right through the outer walls of this Biostack compost bin:


We put wire on the bottom to keep out critters per the instructions and they said not a problem. We'll just gnaw right through the sides.

We used to compost, as I like to not waste and it was a good addition to the vegetable garden. Howver, I noticed after a while we were just feeding the raccoons/possum/other creatures , so we stopped that.

Now we just dump coffee grounds on the garden, as a token effort.

 

[Sunset]

Today I replaced the spark plugs, and 2 of the 4 wires (they seemed to be cracked). All are deeply recessed, about 6 inches down from the top in a 2003 Hyundai sonata.

The weird thing was when I took out 1 of the old spark plugs, it had a bunch of oil on it, at the top of its threads, it was the only one like that. There was not a pool of oil at the bottom of the recess.

I am wondering if there is a small gasket leak nearby, as the top is sealed by the rubber top of the sparkplug connector and the recessed tube itself is shiny clean like stainless steel.

When I was done, the car started up and idled smoothly

 

[Nodak]

This may seem a little extreme but a friend of mne had to resort to this to get rid of gophers on his farmstead.

Gopher Control Rodent Blaster Hot Shot Propane Remote Pest Control for damaging ground squirrels, gophers, ground hogs and other problem rodents.

 

[RockyMtn]

Today I fix the @#&*! Xmas lights yet again. Half of a string goes out then a whole string. It's enough to turn me into scrooge. Darn things last about two weeks!