Armadillos and Grubs: A Lesson In Integrated Pest Management
Posted: Tuesday, September 04, 2007
by James Burns
Rational Environmental Solutions
The lady with the excited voice on the phone told me that she had gone outside this morning and had seen armadillos digging up her lawn. I am not sure whether the excitement was from the destruction of her lawn, or the wonder at seeing an armadillo out of it's normal setting, which is, upside down, feet in the air, lying beside the highway!
When I got there, I took some water with dish soap added, (see How To Detect Pests Before They Eat Your Lawn) and did a soap test. Sure enough, in a few minutes, there came up out of the soapy ground, several big fat healthy grubs.
In nature cause and effect work in predictable ways just as in physics or electronics. The ladies lawn had become a fast food restaurant for the omnivores. The demonstration worked well, and the lady was more than happy to pay the fee to get rid of the grubs, in order to get rid of the "dillos."
If she had not seen the armadillos, she would have called me in a few days, saying that her Bermuda grass was looking really bad and asking if I could fertilize it for her, which of course would have done no good.
One mystery solved, but why were the grubs in her yard to begin with? Well, a quick survey of her outdoor lighting gave me the answer to that question as well. Home lawn security lights and street lights which I could have found even if I couldn't see them, because the grubs are almost always found in areas with artificial light. Why there? Because the light draws the June bugs, and the June bug is the parent of the grubs.
We could continue to dig further into the little biological mystery, but I know that the security light is needed, and I knew that the upcoming crop of June beetles would not be as large as the previous one, so she would be OK for a while, but would eventually have the same problem again.
Whether you are aware of it or not, you have just learned a lesson in IPM, integrated pest management, and the idea that we usually create our own pest problems. In this case, we couldn't reasonably do anything to solve the problem at it's root, and the pest damage was unacceptable, so we used the least invasive treatment which we were able to use, in this case it was chemical.
If we could remove the lighting, the bugs would eventually depart, and the armadillos with them. Removing the lights, however, would leave the home more vulnerable to human predators, and the safety of the home owner takes precedence. What good would the lawn be without someone to tend and enjoy it?
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