Unwanted Visitors

Monday morning, I woke up to find a mound of dirt in our backyard behind our lone tree.  My heart sank when I saw it as I wasn't quite sure what caused the huge dirt pile.  It almost looked like a hill of fire ants, but after investigating, I realized that there were no small creatures coming out of it.  My next suspicion was the armadillo that had been crawling around our home at night, but I had never heard of them digging up yards.

Since I had no clue what was causing damage to our yard, I decided to do some research online.  Although Google Gemini agreed that it could be an armadillo, they said that the most plausible answer was either a gopher tortoise or a pocket gopher.  I knew that the first one was a protected species in Florida, so I stopped physically poking around the mound immediately.  Instead, I called the "gopher guy" who I had seen several people post about on our HOA Facebook page.  After not getting an answer or a callback and seeing another hole pop up in our yard on Tuesday morning, I started to panic.  Thankfully, I remembered that our pest control guy was local and that he might have a suggestion.  He instantly texted me back the number of a wildlife company that agreed to come out today.

After walking around our backyard, the trapper told me that it was for sure a pocket gopher and set a live trap in the second mound.  If the gopher wasn't caught in two days, she would fumigate the tunnel on day three.  I was relieved that we had a solution to the problem but soon found out from Doug that we had another unwanted visitor roaming around our backyard.  A black snake had made a home under the grill recently.  Much to the dismay of Doug's coworkers, I instantly spread Epsom salt around the entire grill and fence area where the snake was last seen.  I know it will scare off the rodents, but having a snake in my backyard is too close for comfort to me.