Posted on 06/19/2009 5:33:57 PM PDT by randita
We have been plagued with groundhogs burrowing under our front porch slab for a couple of years. The burrowing has caused several cracks in the slab.
We have tried liquid fence, mothballs, noise, electric trip wires, have a heart trap, plugging up holes with stone and cement (it just digs new ones). Sometimes we are rid of them for a little bit, then a new one comes along.
This morning, I went out to pick some lettuce from my small garden and there wasn't any left. It had all been chewed off. We live in suburbia and can't exactly sit out on our front porch in a rocking chair with a .22, waiting for the pest to emerge. Although a carefully aimed shot out a 2nd story window has been fruitful on a couple of occasions. Then again, we can't just sit by a window all day waiting to see the pest.
We can't poison it (would love to!) because it might die under the porch slab and our basement (which we heavily use) would reek to high heaven.
We are at our wit's end. Any and all ideas appreciated.
Any miracle ideas?
To a small degree. Moles eat grubs....Get rid of the grubs, get rid of the moles.
1) Run an old vacuum hose from a vehicle tailpipe into their burrow and wipe them out with carbon monoxide.
2) Pump a barbeque-size tankful of propane into their burrow and ignite. I don't know how far back you would need to stand. One ignition method would be to run 100 feet of speaker wire from just inside the burrow entrance to a car battery. Have the wires touching at the burrow end, and when ready to ignite, touch the distant two ends to the battery posts.
Disclaimer: I've never done either of the above, and kids should not try this at home.
Groundhog, you say?
Here is a trick that I know works on Moles, might work here too. Cedar Moth Balls. The smell of the cedar, moles do not like, they will leave. Perhaps some cedar buried in their tunnels will encourage them to beat cheeks.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=cajun+recipe+groundhog&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g9g%3As1
We had groundhogs nesting under our front steps and after a few thousand dollars of mudjacking we declared “war” on the critters. Tried everything. There were the two adults and 3 babies and they would eat my lettuce patch overnight. One year we had groundhogs burrowed under the porch on one side and a den of foxes on the other. The foxes were pretty easy to chase off; not so the groundhogs.
(And, we live in the middle of a good-sized town!!)
First, look for a drippy spiggot outside. I discovered one reason they liked being under the porch was they had easy access to fresh water all the time. So, I fixed the faucet.
After you’ve driven them from the hole, you have to understand the habits of the groundhog. When the family is raised the little guys leave home. Mom goes to her den to sleep and dad sleeps in his den. In the spring dad wakes up and goes and knocks on mom’s door to make sure she is still there, then goes back to sleep in his den. In a couple of weeks they wake up again and do the deed and then have the babies in “her” hidey hole (usually hers but if they really like his house better they pack up and move).
You have to keep fighting them even in fall. We finally got a bunch of giant smoke bombs over the 4th of July and saved them. In October when it started getting pretty cool we didn’t want either one of them to hibernate under the porch again, and by then the ammonia, pepper, urine, blood, kitty litter had all lost their charm. So, we dropped down a giant smoke bomb every few days.
You can tell if there’s a groundhog in the hole by the parasitic flies. The flies like to swarm the groundhogs face and when they go into their holes the flies will disembark and wait for him to come back out. They will loiter on the porch. So, if you see a bunch of flies just sitting and waiting, the groundhog is in.
Once we knew that the hole was empty and the groundhogs were sheltered elsewhere for the winter we filled up the holes and laid big, flat rocks over the opening. They have not come back this year.
I’m getting more smoke bombs this year to keep on hand.
Many years ago when I lived back in my ancestral haunts in the country (an area now taken over by the far suburbs) I had an Ibizan Hound named, appropriately, Tut. He amazed some of the local folk because he would wait patiently by a groundhog hole, and when the “whistlepig” emerged, he was quick enough to kill it, and he would.
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