Lawn
Something is eating what lives in your lawn.
Digging in turf is almost always a grub problem expressed by a skunk, an armadillo, or a raccoon.
Japanese beetle and June beetle larvae live in the root zone of well-watered turf. Skunks dig neat conical holes to reach them; raccoons roll back whole sheets of sod; armadillos, now common across the Southeast, leave shallow scoops and disturbed mulch. The animals are following the food, and the food is the actual problem.
What you are hearing
Small, tidy, cone-shaped holes overnight are skunk work. Sod peeled back in strips is raccoon. Numerous shallow scoops with a snuffled edge, often in mulch beds, is armadillo. Heavy activity in September and October coincides with grubs feeding near the surface.
What to do
- 01Check for grubs: lift a square foot of turf and count. More than five or six per square foot explains the digging.
- 02Treat the grubs with beneficial nematodes or milky spore, applied when soil is warm and moist.
- 03Water less frequently and more deeply; saturated turf is what concentrates larvae near the surface.
- 04Roll damaged sod back down and water it; most of it recovers.
What not to do
- Do not trap the animal. The digging resumes with the next one while the grubs remain.
- Do not apply a broad-spectrum insecticide across the whole lawn.
- Do not water nightly through late summer.
Stopping it happening again
- Manage the grub population and the digging stops on its own.
- Accept some autumn digging as a seasonal event rather than an infestation.
- Reduce lawn area in favour of planting that does not host turf grubs.
When to call someone licensed
Only if damage is extensive or you want the grub treatment done for you. Lawn care, not wildlife removal.
Find a rehabilitatorUnderstand the animal
A skunk working over a lawn in October is doing free pest control, somewhat destructively, on an insect population you would otherwise pay to treat.