Moles and gophers invading East Texas yards

TYLER — "You walk in the yard and...you sink into them and they kill your plants and they just make a general mess everywhere," said Lesley Smithers.

Smithers lives in Flint.  Like many East Texans at the moment, she's got critters in her yard.

So she called Michael Farnham, the owner of Mole Masters, a mole and gopher extermination company out of Tyler.  They use a series of professional traps to catch the little guys.

Farnham says spring is a pretty busy time for them.

"These guys, they just got through having their babies and the moms and dads are hungry, they need to make and get more food...they're gonna cause a lot more problems in your yard right now," Farnham said.

Farnham says gophers eat plants...and moles eat insects.

But they both tunnel through your yard looking for food. 

Gophers excavate the dirt, so they're the ones that make the mounds...but the moles sort of swim through the dirt.

"And they're kind of popping and moving the ground up as they go and that's why you see the ridges and the cracks," Farnham said.

And Farnham tells KETK that once those underground tunnels are made, other creatures often decide to use them.

"I've caught mice, I've caught gophers, I've caught...snakes!  Caught a snake one time in a mole trap, so lots of stuff runs in that tunnel," Farnham said.

Lesley Smithers is not a native East Texan.  She says things are a little different where she comes from.

"We have moles, we don't have gophers!  And I never had a problem with them in Britain, but our yard is bigger here I guess," Smithers said.

Farnham tells KETK there are some things you can try at home -- like Castor Oil.  But he says things like that only drives them out of your yard -- they'll probably come back -- and of course it's possible that some of that stuff like baits will hurt your pets.

So he says it's just best to call in a professional.  What he does is completely safe.