Armadillo Removal in Stockbridge, GA

Armadillos digging up your Stockbridge yard

Armadillos are more common in central Georgia every year, and they get around Stockbridge's built-up neighborhoods more easily than you'd think. They travel along the mowed grass of power-line and sewer easements, the banks of retention ponds, creek buffers, and the grassy strips beside highways, then come up into the backyards that border those routes. A watered lawn has soft soil and grubs and worms close to the surface, and that's what they're after.

The damage looks like a lot of animals were involved. You'll see cone-shaped holes all over the lawn, pine straw thrown out of the beds, and sometimes a strip of sod that looks like hogs rooted through it. Usually it's one animal coming back night after night. Nothing on the store shelf keeps it away, and nothing works as bait. What works is a trap set right on the path the armadillo uses, followed by closing off the burrow.

Yard holes versus burrows

The feeding holes look bad but they're shallow. The lawn grows back and the beds can be raked smooth. Burrows are the bigger problem. An armadillo likes to dig its den under something solid: a deck, a shed floor, an AC pad, a stoop, or along a slab or crawlspace wall. As the tunnel gets longer, the soil under that structure washes out and can settle. If you see a fresh burrow next to the house, call sooner rather than later.

Why yards along the green strips get hit first

On a Stockbridge lot, the armadillo damage usually starts at the edge that borders an easement, a pond bank or a stand of trees. That's how the animal arrives. A watered, fertilized lawn keeps grubs and earthworms near the surface in soft soil, and after a rain the digging often gets worse. A yard deeper inside a subdivision, away from those routes, usually sees less of it.

What doesn't work

Mothballs, castor-oil granules, predator urine, ultrasonic stakes and hot-pepper sprays have all been tried, and none of them reliably keep an armadillo away. It digs on instinct and just moves a few feet over. Mothballs shouldn't go on a lawn at all. Treating the lawn for grubs seems logical but usually backfires: with fewer grubs, the armadillo digs more holes looking for what's left. You lose a few more weeks of lawn for every one of these you try.

Trapping is about placement, not bait

There's nothing you can bait an armadillo with, so the pro doesn't try. The trap has to be where the armadillo already walks. The pro finds the worn path along the fence, the gap it uses to get into the yard, and the entrance to the burrow. Then they set a pre-set wooden box trap on that path, often with boards angled to guide the animal in. When the trap is in the right spot, armadillos usually walk in within a few nights.

Closing off the burrow and the gaps

After the armadillo is caught, the job isn't finished. Another one coming along the same easement will find the empty burrow and move in. The pro buries wire mesh around the bottom of the deck, shed or stoop, turned out at an angle so nothing can dig under it, and fills or blocks the old burrow. Closing gaps under the back fence where the animal was getting in also helps.

When the burrow is already under the slab

When a burrow goes under a foundation, a slab or a heavy AC pad, the order of steps matters. First catch the armadillo, then make sure no young are still inside, and only then fill or seal the cavity. If you fill the hole while the animal is still inside, it will dig a new way out, sometimes right beside the slab. Georgia doesn't restrict trapping armadillos, but doing the steps in the right order is what protects the structure.