Moles are very cute, but rather malicious representatives of the fauna. They do not eat plants, but do significant harm to gardeners. Looking for earthworms, which are the main food for blind rodents, moles damage the roots of plants. If several families have settled on the site, then they can completely exhaust the worms that are the producers of humus. Heaps of land that moles throw away during digging do not decorate the site.
It is difficult to get rid of small pests: they rarely leave areas where there is enough food. It remains only to scare or catch them and carry them away from their garden or garden plot. In order to catch a mole, you need a special mole catcher. You can buy the finished product in stores for gardeners. Usually it is a pipe, at the ends of which movable shutters are fixed. They open inwards and work in such a way that a mole can enter the pipe, and the shutters interfere with it. Similar molehills with their own hands can be assembled from metal pipes or hard plastic. Sometimes traps of small sizes are used to catch moles. The complexity of their use lies in the fact that moles, unlike mice, do not eat food that can be installed as bait. The very method of catching a trap is too cruel: moles often break bones, after which they painfully die. Hunting traps are difficult to establish in moleholes. For mole hunting, it is preferable to use molehills made from improvised material or bought in stores. Of course, it is worth considering that purchased traps are more reliable than mole traps made with their own hands from wood or plastic. However, they may need about a dozen, and so do-it-yourself devices are more economical. The simplest of them does not cost anything: it can be made from an old pan.
Simple trap
Such molehills, made with their own hands from unnecessary kitchen utensils, are easy to install. They find a move, bury an old pan (jar) in the ground under it so that the animal running along the aisle falls into this container. You can, of course, make molehills with your own hands from old children's toys, wooden blocks or wire, but these products will require special skills. Even a woman can catch a mole in a tureen without outside help.
How to set molehills:
- Traps are best set in the morning. To establish a “pipe”, you need to use your hands to dig up the soil, where there could be a move. Insert a trap inside so that the earth does not pour on it and does not interfere with the movement of the dampers.
- To install molehills, made from pots with your own hands, you need to a depth of 5-20 cm.
- Moles are very sensitive to sounds and smells. Therefore, you need to set traps or traps in gloves and clothing, which does not smell like tobacco or perfume.
Mole control methods
Before setting traps, you can try to scare away moles. Ready-made repellers are sold, and homemade ones can be made, for example, from a plastic bottle. To do this, a small plastic tube is dug into the ground below the wormhole. The bottom is cut out in the bottle (not completely, but slightly more than the diameter of the tube). Windows are cut in the lower part and the plastic is bent so that the blades turn out. Put the device on the tube. The bottle will spin from the wind, beat against the tube, and the vibration will scare away the moles. If the animals are not afraid, then a mole catcher will come in handy. With our own hands, as we found out, it is not difficult to do it.