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Issue #228 July 2009
The Critter Chronicles
by Steve Ciarcia
It all started with the mulch, but I’m told you grass guys have similar problems. I won’t reiterate my rationale for spreading 60 yards of mulch, but let’s just say that the best part for me is not having a lawn at all (long story). I just spread the mulch in the spring and then listen to all my friends talk about dying in the 90° heat while they are mowing lawns every Saturday.
The bad news about spreading all this mulch for 20 years is that it has ultimately become a composted smorgasbord for all sorts of underground animal life. I used to wonder why we seemed to have three times as many robin nests than the neighbors until I realized that we’re probably growing more earthworms and grubs than a bait factory. Unfortunately, the downside of creating this massive food source is that the local mole population thinks they have died and gone to their version of a Las Vegas buffet.
I don’t know whether they are moles, voles, or whatever, but the result is the same—tunnels! There aren’t just a few tunnels, mind you. Unabated, a month of mole mayhem is a backyard that looks like the New York subway system after a major earthquake. Over the years, I’ve tried a number of remedies: mechanical traps, battery-operated vibrators, “mole pellets,” grub killers, and other things.
After reading that certain moles avoid castor oil like the plague (Who knows what kind of stuff my particular moles or voles don’t like?), last year I bought a gallon of pure castor oil—talk about an expensive deterrent! I just had to mix it in a soapy “carrier solution” (easier said than done), spray it on the affected area, and then apply a thousand gallons of water to soak it down to “mole level.” Needless to say, it was about as effective as everything else I’ve tried.
I don’t like admitting defeat, but I have a 4-oz nemesis that has definitely been winning the war so far. I’ve considered a massive overkill application of grub killers and assorted chemical-warfare agents, but I do care about the environment, and I don’t want to poison all the birds as a consequence. Besides, I think these guys are attracted by the earthworms rather than the grubs, and since our domestic water supply comes from a well, chemically eradicating all life in my yard might accidentally include me as well.
The one tiny glimmer of hope in the “Critter Chronicles” was that the critters didn’t seem to like heavy machinery driving across their latest dig sites. Whenever I spent an afternoon in the backyard with the tractor or some other motorized vehicle, it seemed to take the moles a day or two before they ventured back. “Ah hah! Perhaps there is a simple engineering solution rather than using WMD,” I thought. “Apparently, the critters don’t like vibration (at least from 2-ton tractors anyway), but the degree of vibration must be important too.”
I bought a bunch of those wimpy battery-operated vibrators a number of years back, but they were worthless. Certainly it was because there wasn’t enough vibration to be of consequence. I decided to fix that. I had some quick thoughts about sinking a dozen 5' steel rods in the yard with 0.5-horsepower, paint-shaker motors welded to them, but it would have been pretty ugly. Fortunately, sanity prevailed, and it was off to Home Depot to get parts for a more cost-effective alternative.
Big box stores attract all kinds. Unfortunately, because engineers are a minority population, the Home Depot staff hasn’t experienced enough of us to avoid hitting the Panic button when we start selecting out-of-the-ordinary project materials. There I was in the plumbing aisle cutting 8" pieces of plastic pipe fitted with closed-end caps and piling them in the cart as three staffers walked down the aisle toward me. One of them cautiously asked, “Sir, are you planning on filling those pipes with something flammable?”
Immediately, I realized that these guys were wondering if I was some kind of misguided terrorist who perhaps didn’t realize the difference between 350-PSI plastic and 4000-PSIG cast iron pipe. I just smiled and said, “Nope, I’m making mole bombs!” To make a long story short, the terror on their faces evaporated when I explained that I was using the pipes for a less nefarious purpose. I said each pipe would contain a powerful 12-V DC motor with an off-center metal weight attached to the shaft—basically a big vibrator—and would be buried in the yard.
Like everything else I do these days, this project ended up to be more than I originally anticipated. Buried vibrators with enough power to constitute acceptable overkill take a bit of current at 12 V. Ultimately, the three sections of the yard where mole bombs would be tested required separate heavy-duty power supplies and heavy-gauge wiring out to each “field.” In addition, since I didn’t want the moles to get used to it, I installed a central controller that was wired to the three field controllers and programmed to randomly select on and off times for the vibrators.
Who knows if it works? At this point, I have nine vibrators buried and six more planned. It’s been too short a time to see if there has been any affect at all or if this is just another big expensive boondoggle. If that’s the case, I think my next attempt will involve using ground-penetrating radar and a harpoon. ;-)
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