Imagine this, you have just finally gotten your dream house, and it has a beautiful lawn and garden space that you can’t wait to design. Or, you’ve finally gotten all your plants growing and thriving in your garden, and everything seems so peaceful. Suddenly, you wake up one morning to find out that your garden is full of holes! Your immaculately designed space full of lush green and colorful hues is now filled with brown dirt and mud! Who is the culprit? While most of us would suspect squirrels, chipmunks, and groundhogs, you might be surprised that skunks can dig holes through your lawn as well! So, how do you know what kind of animal it was?
Skunks are naturally burrowing animals, and with other wildlife creatures like raccoons and opossums liking to dig as well, it’s kind of hard to tell when it’s a skunk around your property. Usually, it is better to wait for professionals to assess your property so that you can be sure what kind of problem you are dealing with, but a professional assessment can be costly, and it can range anywhere from $75 to $300 just for an inspection. However, we have compiled a few tips that we can share for you to recognize if it is a skunk hole or not and whether it’s a skunk hole used for foraging or a skunk hole used for dens and shelters.
Foraging Holes
When you see that there are a lot of holes, and they are small and shallow, then they’re probably skunk holes. These holes will be cone-shaped, around 3 inches deep, and will have a diameter of 3 to 5 inches. These kinds of holes are made by skunks when they are searching for food in the earth. They like eating earthworms and grubs in your lawn and garden, and they will dig into it to find them.
Skunk Dens
Like most wildlife animals, skunks like digging their shelter under things that they consider as safe and protective. This can be fallen logs, stumps, hollow trees, and even urban spaces like sheds, garages, and under your deck or patio. These kinds of skunk holes will be more or less 8 inches in diameter, and it will be deep enough that you cannot see the bottom of the hole. Sometimes, skunks can even dig as deep as a foot underground, due to their very sharp and strong claws.
How to Prevent Skunk Holes
If you want to prevent skunks from digging through your beautiful landscape, or through your well-cared-for crops, purchase bird netting (also called fruit tree netting) from your local garden shop and lay the netting on the ground. Try to bunch up the edges like you are building up “valleys” on the sides of the net. This will discourage skunks from even stepping into them since they think it is dangerous.
You can also put wire mesh over the openings of the holes in the exterior of your house. Make sure that the squares are under 4 inches wide since skunks can fit through 4-inch holes easily. Dig these wire mesh fences underground as well, to prevent them from digging underneath your fence and still gaining access to your property.
Go back to the Strafford County wildlife removal home page.