I seem to be getting holes in my lawn. They seem to appear in the middle of the night, so I’m not sure what’s making these holes. Although I suspect raccoons.
There are a lot of different things that can cause holes in the lawn. In some cases, it depends on the size of the hole as to what might be digging it.
Insects and worms can dig small holes. But these holes are about an inch or two across and some can go about four inches deep. So I don’t suspect worms or insects. Any insect that digs a hole that size I really don’t want to meet.
There are a number of other things that could be the cause. Various small animals, although I would think some of those small animals would be making tunnels as well as holes, and I don’t have tunnels. It could be birds, but I can’t see a bird digging holes quite this deep.
From what you can find online, this could even be caused by crayfish. But you don’t see many crayfish in the area. And if it turns out to be crayfish, I’m likely to be on the lawn in the middle of the night, filling a pot with crayfish to boil them up.
I’m thinking either skunks or raccoons. I haven’t seen many skunks roaming the area, so I suspect it could be raccoons.
There are times raccoons will actually roll up the sod of a lawn to get at grubs and bugs underneath. Thankfully, they haven’t gotten quite that energetic. These are just a bunch of small holes. Small enough that if they would just take the time to fill them in, I might not even mind them digging up the lawn.
So I think the raccoons, which are likely causing the hole problem, are likely digging the holes to rid me of grubs in my lawn. That’s very nice of them. If they would stop leaving the holes.
I have not gone out to dig up a piece of lawn to see if I can find any grubs. I’m not sure there would be many left, judging from the amount of digging going on. But there are those in my family who are not in favour of using pesticides on the lawn, so even if I had grubs, I’m not sure what to do about them. Pesticides do work fast, but you can also use nematodes.
Nematodes are small worms that will eat the grubs. However, they say they can take up to three years to be effective. And if you put out worms to eat the bugs, is this going to end up being one of those “there was an old lady who swallowed a fly,” moments? Trapped in an endless cycle of putting ever larger critters on your lawn to get rid of things that get rid of other things?
I think I’ll just stick to filling in the holes. Although if I can just teach the raccoons to replace their divots, that might be even better.
