2/19/2015 2:02 PM
Our course has always been plagued with moles. Not to make mountains out of them, but a few hundred mole hills scattered around the golf course can really detract from the appearance and the playing experience. We tried various remedies, commercial repellents, noise makers, crushed glass, poisons, moth balls, etc but nothing was effective.
Early last year, one of my assistants came across some literaure explaining methods on how to set traps. He has since become quite adept at trapping moles. In 2014 he took out 142 of the blind little nuisances, and so far this year another 24. He works with small, inexpensive, spring loaded traps, kind of like mouse traps, that he buries at strategic points along the mole chambers. My assistant plants the traps during the day, marks the location with an "X" in white marking paint, leaves them overnight and harvests the carcasses the following day.
The mystery is that in the past few months, the traps have been disappearing. When my man goes to check for them, he lifts up the sod and soil that was covering them, and THERE IS NOTHING THERE, AND THE TRAP HAS DISAPPEARED! The surface over the trap appears to be undisturbed, just as he left it the day before, his signature paint mark and all.
It beyond belief that anyone would be shadowing him to see where he's palcing the traps. Now during the winter there are very few golfers on the course, and besides, we're an affluent private club whose members have an intrinsic aversion to anything that might get their hands dirty. We are surrounded on all sides by a national forest so it's not like the neighbors are watching. We would certainly notice if anyone on our staff was going around removing them, and in any case, the white paint serves as a seal and it would be obvious if anyone had dug there. We have foxes on the property, but if one of them dug out a mole I'm sure he wouldn't bother to put back the soil.
It seems equally implausably that a mole, after he has sprung the trap that breaks his neck, drags it away through the tunnel.
It's wierd. Any ideas?