Our lawn is rubbish. You sit on a chair ans three of the four legs sink anything up to 20cm, and you end up embarrassed at best. We’re told it’s because there’s a maze of shrew burrows beneath the lawn. The previous owners had frankly inferior companion animals - two French bulldogs whose main activity, at least from what we saw, was to indulge in faecal incontinence on the paths - so, despite our cat‘s best endeavours, the damage was already done.
I’ve read that the tunnels are often about 10cm below the surface , though they can be deeper.
Is there some sort of device, probably with spikes, that I could use to repair the damage? Or is the only option to relay the lawn?
Might be easier to buy some chairs with broader feet, or the folding metal frame type where both the front and back legs are connected with a lateral bar.
It would be a major job as would need to make sure all tunnels are eradicated and levelled.
We use(d) these
You need a skewer to locate tunnels, and narrow trowel to make hole. They work extremely well and we have dispatched many, many voles such that garden is now ok. And once a run has been cleared then fill holes and dips with soil.
We don’t really go in for killing things but when you find your newly planted tree has toppled over totally rootless then that was the limit.
Back in the UK we had a terrible problem with tunnels (moles/shrews/whatever) and one evening (came back from a hard day’s work) I simply lost my temper and went around stabbing the ground with a garden fork.
One mole popped out and I ran hither and thither (in my stiletto heeled shoes ) trying to stab the little terror. aaaargh
He escaped my wrath. But I tore the seams on my stylishly tight skirt
When I had calmed down I felt awful at having nearly killed the animal.
We decided to live and let live. By walking/stamping regularly and playing football with our daughter on that patch, the mole got the message and went elsewhere. It was a very large garden and he/she had plenty of choice
EDIT: If the tunnels are on an area where you particularly enjoy sitting… why not put down a wooden base or slabs.
Stable for your chairs/table/whatever
It’s not the grass or levelness for sitting, which didn’t bother us and we left them alone, but that they can devastate the veg garden and kill shrubs overnight. Once they started there it was war.
We have the same problem - wife today fell heel first in her Danish clogs down one of the collapsed tunnels, most inelegant !
In this part of the world, they are “rats taupiers”, and are one of the main reasons we have kites again, so killing them is reserved for the most egregious of offenders on farms when their pastureland gets destroyed.
In the garden, I’ve tried archery, letting my inner Robin Hood free, spear fishing, thyme, rosemary, scented granules, traps, coffee grounds , all with very poor results. The best results I ever got were with the “Détaupeur”, a trip sensor explosive cap that you bury in the tunnel exit. As they hate their tunnel exits being blocked up, they come along and as they move the earth towards the trip sensor, it gets pushed up, closes the electrical switch and the cap detonates - enough to make the ground shake with the shockwave, which with a bit of luck causes them to suffer cerebral damage. I don’t recommend being near one when it goes off, they’re quite loud and make one’s ears ring. I seem to recall that there was a thread on here about the device a few years ago. Also, not cheap.
) trying to stab the little terror. aaaargh
