How To Identify What Unwanted Critter Is Damaging Your Yard Or Garden

No one wants to wake up and discover their normally pristine lawn is marred by a freshly dug hole. If you can't immediately pin the blame on your dog, then you know you've got an intruder on your hands. The culprit might be any number of critters, including groundhogs, skunks, or voles. To unravel the mystery, the best thing to do is to study the hole, paying special attention to the size and the soil left around it.

Animals mostly dig for food or shelter, so they're most active in the spring and fall when these things are at the top of their list. In the fall, many animals want to pack on weight to survive the winter, and in the spring, they may be looking for a nice new home to care for their little ones. And to figure out the best way to deal with the pest, you have to figure out what animal is digging up your lawn.  

First, analyze the size of the hole. If it is just an inch or so wide, then you might have a skunk hunting for grubs or earthworms. If the hole is about 3 inches wide and appears to be deep, then you could have a rat on your hands. Large holes, like a foot wide, probably belong to groundhogs. Even bigger ones than that, like those that stretch several feet wide, might be a coyote's den.

To really unravel the mystery of the digger, look at the dirt left behind. Skunks like to leave a ring of dirt around their spots. Raccoons keep entire sod chunks intact, overturning them nearby. Gophers like to make a fan-shaped half-ring around a soil-filled hole. 

Moles can be another common animal damaging your yard. Sometimes they will leave a soil mound when they push up to get fresh air into their maze of tunnels. This dirt hill can even reach up to a foot high. They can even accidentally push flowers out of the garden bed when they poke up to the surface, too. They won't usually affect grass long term, though. While moles don't actively eat grass, voles do since they feed on grass roots. Sometimes called field mice, voles leave sunken trails above ground or raised tunnels below ground. They might also make small, one-inch holes when they're digging up flower bulbs to eat. 

If you live in the Southwest and see dozens of pockets in the lawn and three-toed track marks near them, then the chances are good you've got an armadillo visitor. On the other hand, a hole that's covered in leaves or fuzz probably means you've stumbled upon a rabbit's nest for their young. Snakes tend not to make their own holes, but they will steal a vole's or another critter's abandoned tunnel.

If you're still not sure what kind of critter is digging that hole, you can always check with the Internet Center for Wildlife Damage Management, which offers practical advice on how to identify and figure out what's doing the damage to your yard. They offer tips about how to make sense of debris near the hole, tracks, or animal droppings nearby. To get rid of the animal doing the damage, try setting traps if they've become a serious problem for your lawn.

There are also humane ways to deter animals from digging in your yard. Think about adding a barrier, like a fence or other deterrent structure that might keep animals off your property. Lawn lights can also deter nocturnal animals like skunks from digging at night because they don't like bright light. It might also be a good idea to think about strategic gardening, like planting daffodils if you have a groundhog problem, for instance, since the animals don't like to eat these flowers.

Also, the holes in your yard might be the least of your worries. Animals digging can alert you to other problems. Skunks love digging for grubs in the lawn, so if skunks have been busy digging nose-sized holes in your yard at night, then you might have a serious grub problem. Treating your lawn for grubs in the spring or summer might even discourage skunks from coming to your yard in the first place.