rodent ID help please!

19 years ago

Hello there,

I havent' been to the forums in a long, long time but still recognize some names out there. I have a question that i hope that others may be able to help with. We have some sort of animal digging around our buildings. It must be about the size of a rat. We caught a couple of rats in snap traps in the past few weeks but now I think we have a new species moving in to the abandoned tunnels. When the rats were here we had spongy ground around the tunnels and would see fairly clean holes leading to the tunnels. Now i am having one very active hole that is getting dirt mounded to the outside of it every day and no more spongy ground. The fresh dirt is moved further and further from the opening each day. I tried putting a snap trap with peanut butter and then molasses but both times the animal covered up the trap with dirt without setting it off. This same species lived under our porch a few years back and moved huge amounts of sand from under the stone patio. We have never figured out what this bugger is. We know it is smaller than a ground hog. Is it rabbits? We have never seen any animal so we are at a loss as to what it is.

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Comments (7)

Maggie_J
19 years ago
Not rabbits. Cottontails don't dig burrows. Not chipmunks. They don't leave a mound. Not knowing where you are, it is a bit difficult to go further than what is ISN'T.
ceresone
19 years ago
armadillo?
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imtoobusy
Original Author
19 years ago
Sorry, I am in southern Pennsylvania. No armadillos around here....
lyndainvirginia
19 years ago
sounds like rats. we have the same problem, large holes with ever growing mounds of dirt. we tried everything to stop them but nothing works except poison. i mix it with peanutbutter to get them to eat it, then i put it under an upside down plastic milk crate with a weight on top so nothing else can get at it. i'm sorry if this sounds to extreme, but we have an extreme problem with rats.
Maggie_J
19 years ago
I have to admit, rats seem the most likely answer. I checked a website that has a list of mammals in PA and did not see any other likely candidates.

Here is a link that might be useful: PA Mammals
imtoobusy
Original Author
19 years ago
Thanks for your assistance, everyone. I will proceed with the notion that it is a rat that has become too smart to eat my bait/get near my traps. I am going to do something that someone on this list suggested a long time ago for dealing with ground hogs. I am going to gas it with a road flare in the hole. First I am planning on filling in all of the holes that i see and then i will put a burning flare into the final hole and quickly fill it with dirt. Then i will stand by the ready to fill in any holes that i may have missed that have smoke coming out of them. wish me luck!!!
Maggie_J
19 years ago
If you fill the last hole with dirt, will the flare continue to burn? Doesn't it need oxygen?

Please post an update and let us know how it works. It sounds as though it definitely has possibilities.