A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2006 Something ALIVE making holes in yard.

Cindy....this is a good mystery....we are all sitting on the edge of our chairs in anticipation.

Ohhhh my....don't drown whatever it is!!!!! It could be something that took over a hole from some other creature. My mom has gopher holes and squirrels holes and the gopher snakes/rattlers take them over and well eat whatever is in there. At least the gopher population decreased.....but I would rather have the furry animals to deal with than those snakes. Ewwwwwwwe!!!!!

If you get that camera .....I will sure be watching. Maybe you could send this whole ordeal to some show on TV..... maybe that is where the money will be made.LOL
Catlover

There are many holes, especially under the bird feeders, so I doubt if it's snakes. We do have plenty here, though!

What you said about the escape hole got me tickled because I pictured myself putting the water down in the hole, then waiting....and waiting... and not taking my eyes off the hole, while the critter just goes out another hole that I'm not watching. I wish he knew I don't want to hurt him, because he's not hurting me. I'm just so curious!
The entertainment value of this hole is great for me! My husband asked last night "What's your next mission going to be when you finally find out what's in the hole?"

This has been so entertaining. I can't wait to find out what it is. My money is on the shrew since its good luck and all... Keep us posted!

Cindy, I had the same situation. A couple of holes in my yard under the bird feeder. Now, my bird feeder sits right outside a window by my dining room table and one day I was sitting there eating and I saw the cuplrit. It was a mole. He would pop up just long enough to grab a sunflower seed and then disappear to eat it.

Well, I found some more holes yesterday. This one is in my crabgrass garden:

I put a dime beside it so you could relate more to the size of the hole.
I dug this hole up, and found nothing. But, I found another about 6 feet from this one and when I turned the shovel full of dirt over, there was the biggest GRUB you would ever want to see. (Not that anyone would want to see a big grub...every time I see one I think about someone eating it on "Fear Factor"!)
Don't know if the grub just happened to be in the shovel of dirt, or if he was the one who made the hole. And, this sucker was HUGE. The biggest, fattest grub I have EVER seen!
Do you think my "mystery holes" could be made by grubs? We have a lot of them here. We put a mini camera at one of the holes by the front door, but haven't seen any movement yet. (Sorry, I couldn't get it on the World Wide Web so EVERYONE could stare at it!)

That hole looks to small for a mole. Are the ones by your bird feeders the same size? That looks about the size of a ground bee hole I had in my yard years ago.

The one with the dime is about as big as they get. A lot of them are that size, but quite a few smaller ones, too.

My guess is a mole cricket or a wasp. Sure would be neat if you could set up a camera and watch. You will have all of us watching with you.

Cindy, any updates??? Inquiring minds want to know.

Cindy...what happens when you put dirt back over the hole??? Nope...not a gopher...that hole is way to small.

I hadn't checked the holes for a few days because I've been sick (well, don't know if you'd call it "sick"...a tumor in my left breast, and one the size of a 3 1/2 month pregnancy in my uterus), so I didn't do too much outside for a few days. We had a huge rain, and now the holes are gone. I think it is from grubs. I have never seen so many HUMONGOUS grubs before! Every time I stick the shovel in the ground and dig even one shovel full of soil, it has grubs in it. I started carrying a little yogurt cup with me when I garden, and I put the grubs in it, then dump it into one of my open bird feeders on the way into the house. The birds love it! I'm hoping to train them to just hang out with me when I'm digging so they can grab the grubs right out of the shovel and I won't have to touch them. About 15 years ago I had a pet chicken that stayed with me when I worked outside (Hazel), and she'd grab anything that was alive out of the dirt when I was digging. She LOVED grubs! She was one happy hen!!!

Cindy,
Are you okay!!!!????
Did you have them removed???

Weezie

So sorry to hear about your illness. Are you doing better now? I think the problem might be mole crickets, they leave holes like that when they emerge. They're coming out all over down here.


Karen

Cindy,
I don't know if you have caught your culprit yet, but I have to tell you that those holes look just like the ones in my yard...I have hundreds of them. Mine are from crawdads! Even if you plug the hole up they come out in a different spot. Rarely do you see the "live" crawdad...as a matter of fact we have only actually seen a couple of them after a big rain.I think they usually come out at night. The crawdads aren't very big..and are the same color as the ground so they are difficult to see unless they are moving. The other news I have for you is that we are BEGGING for a solution! We have tried just about everything with out success! We have sprayed in the holes...covered them up...dug around them...used every chemical known to man...and still we have more holes! So, maybe that is what you have..if so....good luck! We certainly haven't had any!

Cindy,

This hole problem is the exact reason why I came to this site. I have many of these holes as mentioned plus I have many of what looks like Nightcrawler mounds or ant mounds with them.
I have to watch what I put on the lawn due to my dogs. I was about to call a lawn care professional but thought I would search the web for answers first.
Thanks for your dedicated investigation .

I have now been given hope that I may be infested with shrews

Well, I've about come to the conclusion that the holes are from boring old grubs. I was really hoping for something more exciting. Shrews would have been awesome! But, dug a hole up yesterday and found a big, fat 2 inch long grub in it.
BORING!!!

Aliens would have been AWESOME!!!!!

What kinda FOOT PRINT did those GRUBS leave CINDY??

VERY FUNNY!!!!!

Well, it entertained you for awhile, now didn't it?

kept him entertained, but you know what they say about the ease of entertaining innocents!

and cindy, think of all the "free" bird food you are getting!!

Me...INNOCENT...Oh Yeah! , or is that like saying Im a ...complicated individual,ecentric, addle(sp) minded or that old line, he was a quiet man, he never bothered anyone

Sometime during the past week, dozens of holes were created in my yard. Each is about the size of a half-dollar. There is a small amount of dirt mounds around a few of them, and a couple of them have dried grass around the hole, sort of like a bird nest. I've never seen a shrew here, but nothing would surprise me--we've had everything from wild rabbits to a bobcat last summer to a roadrunner in that yard.

I have noticed a couple of toads by the patio--as far as I know they are still there (under flower pots).
I have a cat who goes out during the night mostly, and she will kill anything that moves (or else just wound it and bring it into the house for me to throw out). I would have thought that if the holes were being made by shrews, she would have killed one.

As I said, they seem to have appeared in a little over a week's time, and there are at least a couple of dozen or more, all about the same size.

How can I find out for sure if it's shrews? Forget digging the hole area up--no way am I gonna do that. Any way to find out from a safe distance, other than the flour trick? It's the rainy season here, and any flour I put down will be paste by the next day.

Thanks for any advice...great website!

Instead of having dime to quarter size holes all over my yard, which NO ONE noticed except me, I now have SHOVEL size holes all over my yard!!! Whatever is making the holes is not destroying my yard, they are making ME destroy it!!!
AND THERE'S NOTHING IN THE HOLES!!!!!

I'm beginning to think this is some kind of conspiracy. Andy probably goes out there at night with a cordless drill just to try to PUSH ME OVER THE EDGE!!!!!

he wouldn't have time to do that. but i have thought that my hubby would do something like that too!