Why "The Same Thing That Worked For Her" Didn't Work For Me
I called a wildlife control technician, Mark, who'd been doing this for over a decade. I expected him to tell me I'd bought a bad product.
Instead, he said something that stopped me cold.
"Two neighbors almost never have the same mole problem even with a fence between them."
Here's what he explained.
Moles don't respect property lines. What looks like "my mole problem" and "Carol's mole problem" are often two completely different tunnel systems, sometimes even different colony sizes, just a few hundred feet apart.
Soil type changes the story too. My side of the street has looser, sandier soil near the creek. Carol's side is denser clay.
Vibration and sound don't travel the same way through different soil. In sandy soil, it spreads out and fades fast. In denser soil, it can carry further but unevenly, leaving quiet "dead zones" a mole can just wander around.
So when Carol placed two stakes and it worked, that wasn't the full story.
Her yard needed two. Mine, with a bigger tunnel network and different soil, needed a real coverage plan — not a copy-paste of her setup.
That one piece of missing information explained everything.