‘Pretty shocking’: Kamloops lawn destroyed by mysterious critter

A Kamloops resident woke up to a completely destroyed lawn last week and it isn’t totally clear what wild animal is responsible for it.

Tori Meeks returned to her house after walking her dog in the wee hours on Oct. 30 and noticed the torn-up grass as daylight emerged.

“It was still dark so it took me a little bit to process what had happened,” Meeks said. “It was pretty shocking. It looked like someone had taken a rototiller to the front yard.”

She doesn’t have security cameras so the only clues to go by was a lot a wiggling grubs in the dirt and a faint paw print.

“Big pieces of the grass were torn back and we saw lots of grubs wiggling when we went to put it back,” she said. “I understand grubs eat all the roots of the grass making it easy to pull up, taking dirt with it.”

Meeks guessed the paw print belonged to a raccoon. She hadn’t seen a raccoon before the damage but after speaking with her neighbours, she learned the masked bandits have been spotted in the area before.

“I think the print was three or four inches, it wasn’t that big, I wish I’d taken more photos,” she said. “Raccoons have long fingers, but our soil is like a clay and it was wet. The print didn’t look as long as what is typical for a raccoon, but when I looked up raccoon prints, they don’t always show the long fingers in muddy conditions.”

iNFOnews.ca sent the photos of the destroyed lawn and paw print to Karl Larsen, a professor in the Natural Resource Sciences department at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops.

“I really don’t know what caused that. I think raccoons would be a good guess, but even a bear or coyote could be digging up grubs like leatherjacket larvae,” he told iNFOnews.ca. “My experience with raccoons is fairly limited and I’ve never seen this.”

Matthew Wright with Orkin Canada in Kelowna inspected the photographs and determined the culprit to be a black bear.

“I don’t have anything to judge the size, but it appears to be more of a bear track,” he said. “A raccoon track has a pad and long finger-like toes. This is a bear track with bear toes.

“Racoons will do that kind of thing, but not to this extent. They’ll pick out grubs from the lawn, but this is more like a caveman just ripping up the whole thing.”

Wright has seen raccoon damage on lawns while doing pest control on properties before moving into his current role doing structural pest control. He also has raccoons in his yard.

“They go after crane fly larvae and dig little pockets in the lawn, maybe an inch-and-a-half wide. They won’t do anything close to what you’re seeing in the photo. I don’t see damage to this extent in neighbourhoods, especially over just one night.”

He said crane flies will deposit eggs in the lawn that hatch into grubs that feed on the roots of the grass. Several wild animals feed on the grubs.

Karly McMullen with WildSafeBC couldn’t confirm what animal did the damage, but suggested it could be from raccoons.

Whoever the culprit was, she concurs, it was due to a grub infestation.

“This homeowner likely has an overabundance of grubs in their yard which the raccoons dig out of the ground to eat,” she said in an email. “Grubs are a favourite food for raccoons.”

To deal with grub infestations, McMullen recommends homeowners use granules or other insecticides on the lawn in the summer, or introduce a population of beneficial nematodes, which can be purchased at garden stores, to eat the grubs.

Homeowners can also use physical deterrents. These can include motion activated sprinklers, or laying down deterring scents like predator urine, ammonia, apple cider vinegar or cayenne pepper.

If necessary, the homeowner should contact a pest control specialist for further assistance.

Meeks said she isn’t going to worry about the damage or the grubs until the spring as she’s more concerned about protecting the koi fish in her outdoor pond.

“We’re trying to figure out how to put an electric fence around the pond,” she said. “I’m worried about the koi going missing, they’re so vulnerable to any kind of predator.”