Question about animal under garage

[paul253]

I noticed recently that an animal has been digging a little hole and burrowing underneath my garage. I'm not quite sure what kind of animal it is but my guess would be either a squirrel or a chipmunk. I have two questions. 1) Is this going to cause any damage to the garage? I know it's a cement floor so I assume as long as it's underneath the cement it can't cause too much damage??? 2) How do I get this thing to stay out? I tried filling the hole with mothballs and the thing just threw the mothballs aside. Then I put some poison pellets that I had laying around in the hole but that didn't seem to work either. The pellets were designed for mice so I'm not sure if it would even work against bigger animals but I thought I'd give it a shot. The two suggestions I got were to smoke it out with a smoke bomb and to shoot it with a pellet gun. I don't particularly feel like taking the time to hunt and kill this stupid thing (plus I don't have a pellet gun). Does anyone have any suggestions about how to keep this thing out? Maybe something I can put in the hole that would keep stop it from continuing to go in there?

[strawbossisevil]

Find your local nuclear arms dealer. That should take care of it. Or I suppose you could trap it, traps aren't that expensive and are pretty effective.

[RockCoCougars]

It's likely a gopher. The following may offend 'animal people', so you may want to stop reading if you are one....... My grandpa's solution for pesky gophers was to fill a five gallon pail about half full with water, place a narrow wooden plank down to the bottom of the pail then cover the surface of the water with sunflower seeds. The gopher will go for the seeds and then drown in the water. Somewhat cruel, but apparently was very effective, and doesn't involve poison or anything that could harm kids, pets, etc.

[Invader3K]

It's probably not damaging anything if it's just under your garage.

[jjkoestler]

Speaking as someone who poured concrete foundations for 4 years, I wouldn't worry about it. An animal will not harm your foundation in any way. My advice is to leave the animal alone. If you absolutely feel the need to remove/kill it, do it humanely. Live traps work well.

[Roscoe Chill]

If it was a groundhog I would take action, a chipmunk not so much.

[RyDogg66]

Chippys can be destructive too. My dad, who has an acre of land outside of town, had some chipmunks burrowing into his burm in his garden. He set a rat trap with peanut butter and decided to just keep setting it until the chipmunks stopped. 43 dead chipmunks later is snowed out last winter...

 

Now this year he has muskrats doing the same thing. I think he has 4 so far.

[RockCoCougars]

Chippys can be destructive too. My dad, who has an acre of land outside of town, had some chipmunks burrowing into his burm in his garden. He set a rat trap with peanut butter and decided to just keep setting it until the chipmunks stopped. 43 dead chipmunks later is snowed out last winter...

They like to chew, that's for sure. If they stay under the garage you'll be OK, but if you have a wood door or foundation, they may decide to gnaw their way in. Not sure if they are as bad as squirrels when it comes to nesting in engine blocks, but that's something to think about come fall/winter.

[Nottso]

My garage floor and a part of my driveway are collapsed from the evil little creatures. Make them go away, by any means necessary (and I'm an animal lover).

[berniebrewer4life]

It's likely a gopher. The following may offend 'animal people', so you may want to stop reading if you are one....... My grandpa's solution for pesky gophers was to fill a five gallon pail about half full with water, place a narrow wooden plank down to the bottom of the pail then cover the surface of the water with sunflower seeds. The gopher will go for the seeds and then drown in the water. Somewhat cruel, but apparently was very effective, and doesn't involve poison or anything that could harm kids, pets, etc.

Your grandpa was a smart cookie. I'll have to remember that one.

[BrewersSuperCollector]

I've used the 5 gallon pail idea last year, but I used peanut butter inside of the pail.

[RockCoCougars]

I think that the best way to do it is bait the rim of the pail somehow. Peanut butter topped with a few seeds should do it. Make the 'plank' very narrow, like a ruler or paint stirrer. I know that it was very effective, cause gramps was burying gophers/chipmunks

all the time.

[Thurston Fluff]

I used great stuff foam in the hole when we had that problem. Whatever it was in there didn't chew through it for some reason. My guess is it tasted bad but who knows. It was cheap, easy to use, effective and safe. One thing to keep in mind anytime you have small animals nesting you get larger animals preying on them. Skunks eat rats and gophers for instance. Don't really need to tell you why that isn't good.

[Raw Biz]

We actually had a raccoon get into our basement last month. There was @!%%%! on the side of the house under the deck that it got into. One of our dogs woke up and was scratching at the basement door and going crazy. My dad checked it out and saw traces of something in the ceiling but no animal so he filled the hole. Later in the day, he came home to find the ceiling tiles collapsed and a raccoon in the basement. We had to create a makeshift trap out of a cardboard box and were able to force him into it. My dad wanted to shoot it but we were able to trap it without doing any harm.