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Great Lakes Gardening

Small holes in my yard

17 years ago

I am curious as to what these holes are in my yard. They're no bigger than a quarter and seem to be quite deep. As an experiment, and as part of cleaning my well, I let a hose run down one of these holes for 24 hours, checking it every hour to see if it had overflowed. It never did. The whole time I checked my neighbors yards and all around but no flooding anywhere, absolutely no sign of where the water went. So what small creature was ingenious enough that it could burrow a tunnel that could take that much water and not flood? This just amazes me, the water had to have gone somewhere!

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Comments (5)

jroot
17 years ago
snakes?

or chipmunks?

I'm thinking the former. We have them here too.
ahorselover
17 years ago
I have the same thing in my yard here in GA. Do you see a pattern or are they randomly spread throughout the yard? I see discussions that grubs dig holes but my holes seem too big for that. The holes are perfectly round, about the size of a quarter or even a half dollar.What about crawldads? Someone on another site suggested that.
Related Discussions
What dug this hole in my yard?
Q
Comments (9)
Yup, the insect was just visiting. I could only see one picture. It's possible you've got a gopher, however gopher holes generally aren't this wide and the opening is better defined. Definitely not a snake. The soil looks very dry which makes me suspect that a contributing factor here may be a critter that did a little digging combined with native soil pulling back from the smaller hole that the tree was planted in. Be interesting to put a hose down and see how long it takes to fill up with water! Either way, I'd fill it up with dirt and see if it gets redug. If you've got a gopher you'll see another hole, too. They always have an entry and exit. Keep us posted!
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please advise, Rabbit digging holes in my yard
Q
Comments (2)
They will dig a shallow hole for a nest. Once born, they will cover the babies with leaves, etc. to hide them. They return every few hours to nurse them, but basically the babies are in the nest for about 2 weeks or so. That's the only holes they make in my back yard, otherwise they just hop around and chew on plants.
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Rodents making small size holes all over my garden
Q
Comments (28)
These traps especially the snap traps can kill unintended victims. I ignorantly killed a beautiful wren and crowned sparrow with traps intended for voles and ants. The sparrow got killed in the snap trap and the wren got stuck to a piece of sticky paper. I'm not really happy about all the voles I killed either. They are pests but also quite cute. Just sharing so nobody else makes the same mistake. It's better to find a solution that doesn't involve killing things, and how many animal lives are your precious bulbs really worth? These animals were here before us. We move into their territory and plant alien plants and then question when things don't go smoothly like we expect. We are eradicating and pushing out their native food sources.
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What causes small holes throughout the yard?
Q
Comments (0)
I have small holes throughout the entire back yard. There appears to be 100's of these holes in the yard some big as a gulf ball. I was told squirrels are hiding their nuts in the yard digging the holes. What could cause these holes?
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lee53011
17 years ago
Many times holes are caused by animals LOOKING for grubs. Those would be the small holes that are not very deep. A hole that won't fill with water would have to be a chipmunk hole or similar.

Lee
redshoe
17 years ago
It could be the hole of the 13 lined ground squirel. I have those in my yard, those little devils are cute and they don't damage my garden. They do eat lots of bugs and weed seeds.
poppydog
17 years ago
Have you seen Meerkat Manor on Animal Planet? Ok, unless you live in Africa, I'm just kidding.

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