Not that we have problems with them in Dallas, mind you. Moles, natives of temperate regions of Europe and Asia and North America, aren't fond of digging through heavy clays or caliche (let's be honest -- nobody is!). They like the soft, loamy soils that are easy to tunnel through as they search for their favorite foods -- insect larvae, slugs, insects, grubs, and the occasional earthworm. Some of them even go after small snakes and baby mice. The problem really isn't with their food; it's with their methods of going to get food. Moles, as we all know, tunnel.
They tunnel under lawns, into nurseries, in parks, through golf courses, and (disturbingly) through cemetaries -- any place where there are nice lawns with loamy soils. The suburban lawn is their idea of heaven, with all its vast expanses of green grass and not much else except grubs and pests. But their tunnels can dry out the root systems of plants and abandoned tunnels can also provide runways for less welcome visitors like rats and moles.
They actually build two types of tunnels. The ones we see most often are feeding tunnels, which are used only once or twice (which is why trapping along these tunnels doesn't often work well). There's a set of deeper tunnels (usually ventilated by the traditional molehill) that provide living quarters.
Moles are interesting creatures; small, almost blind-looking vertebrates with dark gray or brown fur that has a velvety look to it. They're insect eaters (not relatives of mice and rats) and they spend most of their lives underground. They don't hibernate, surprisingly. They Temporary surface tunnels where the sod is raised and appears as ridges. These feeding tunnels are used a few times, and then abandoned. Deeper tunnels from which the mole must excavate dirt, forming molehills. The deeper tunnels are used mainly as the living quarters.
Although it's often suggested to people that they leave the moles alone (to clean out their yards), most homeowners aren't delighted to see the fuzzy beasties rear their dark velvet heads in the lawn. Although there may be fewer moles than deer on the face of the planet, there are probably more ways to get rid of moles than there are to get rid of deer. And like the deer problem, most of them don't work as well as one would hope. I'll skip over the killing traps, if you don't mind, and the poisons. I'd particularly encourage you to NEVER poison the moles because the poisoned grubs and insects then come to the surface where birds can get at them. There are reports of urban areas with hundreds of dying robins after part of the neighborhood treated their lawns for moles.
