More on moles

SIR: Regarding Bob Pawsey’s ineffectual removal of his moles using traps (Readers’ Letters, March issue), he needs just a quick lesson. My previous three-quarters of an acre of formal grounds were inundated with dozens of moles when we moved there. Here are four simple rules to follow: 1. Always wear gloves. 2. Ascertain the mole’s point of entry to the lawn by rodding from the molehill back to the entrance to your grounds, feeling for the tunnel as indicated when the rod drops suddenly through it below the surface. 3. Dig a 4–5in diameter hole over the tunnel. 4. Set a trap in the tunnel, bedding down the earth before lowering the trap at the correct angle; then covering the hole to exclude all light.

Using this method, I have never failed to trap every single mole within 24 hours. Margaret Gilman, Oakham, Rutland.

SIR: Congratulations to Alfred Milnes Skinner for claiming to have invented a method of ‘smoking out’ moles using the exhaust from a lawn mower (Readers’ Letters, April issue). I am sorry if I am about to disappoint him but I was using this method more than thirty years ago but with a slight improvement.

I used to get the mower running quite fast, insert the hose in the ground and then squirt copious amounts of Redex into the carburettor to produce plenty of smoke.

Not only did it kill the little rascals but it gave me a lawn full of little smoky volcanoes.

I have never bragged about this before in case I was attacked by the MLPS (mole lovers preservation society). Robin Reynolds, Chelmsford, Essex.