jackg (03/24/83)
Re drowning moles and burrowing animals with a hose in their tunnel: I tried that a few times and probably ran 1000 gallons of water down the tunnel without it ever filling up (this was on level ground too). I don't know where the water went and I do know that the moles didn't leave or get drowned. Any explanation? Jack Gjovaag Tek Labs
kar (04/02/83)
Re: failure to drown moles I'm not so sure about mole holes, but I've tried filling woodchuck holes with water to (ahem) flush them out and it never worked. Upon reading your note, I thought about it for the first time and have reached the following conclusion. A woodchuck (or gopher, squirrel, etc.) hole goes quite a ways into the ground, and counting the "back door", probably has 100 square feet of sur- face area. (Certainly mole holes are smaller; that's why I say I don't know about them above.) Unless you can pour in water faster than it can be absorbed by 100 sq. ft. of earth, you will obviously make little progress. This is cer- tainly the case with my expeditions, on which I was armed with a 5/8 inch gar- den hose. I suspect you'd need a fire hose to make it work. My brother-in-law suggests backing your car up to the hole and connec- ting a hose to the exhaust pipe, the other end of which is stuffed several feet down the hole. One then seals the hole with a plug of dirt, and starts the car. The best part is the next step: pour a little chain saw oil into the carbureator so the exhaust is smoky. This will tell you where the "back door" is (as the smoke wafts out), and that is where you wait with your shotgun. Regarding the moles: perhaps the little devils can hold their breaths, or, more likely, have retreated to high ground elsewhere in their tunnels, out of the path of your raging torrent.
mark (04/06/83)
An observation about drowning moles: Presumably it rains where you live every so often. A good rain will saturate the ground and sometimes even cause flooding in patches. I expect it will fill up a randomly constructed mole or woodchuck tunnel system. Yet the moles and woodchucks survive this quite handily in nature. So I doubt pouring water from your hose down the tunnel will kill them off. I would guess that drainage is something these animals take into account when they dig their holes.