Moles damage flagstone patios and walks

Mole damage flagstone
Moles pop up between flagstone in patios and walks and cause unsightly damage.

When moles and gophers tunnel through the landscape, they often cause damage to the paved surfaces. In the picture above we see damage caused by a mole who has pushed soil up through the flagstone and dislodged the decorative gravel. This is very complicated to repair because the expensive Salmon Bay pebbles are now mixed in with subsoil, and care must be taken to separate them, tamp the soil back down, and re-lay the pebbles.

What is worse, this mole will likely return to do it all over again if he is not eliminated completely. The best way to get rid of moles is trapping. We know many folks have “success” with poison, but frankly, the way moles behave, you may think you killed the mole only to find that “another mole” has come back in 2-4 weeks and messed the yard up again.

What typically happens is; you put poison, the mole misses it completely and moves on to another area of the neighborhood for a few weeks. He then returns to your neck of the woods to do more damage. Hence you think it is another mole. This is why we like trapping, (its also nontoxic). If you have the dead mole in your hands, you will have no doubt that the population in your area is decreased by one, and one is all you may need to kill.

Gophers make piles between flagstone too, and getting rid of them is done in a similar way, but they are much less common in patios than moles.