The Problem

During our home search last year, we found a house we loved. The homeowners had built a new house down the street, then did a few updates on this home before putting it on the market for sale. One of those updates was fresh sod in the backyard. Sadly, every time they revisited this house, they’d find the sod in disarray rolled up by some varmint during the night.

They tried lots of things to solve the problem, and even caught an armadillo in a trap. (No wildlife was injured in this process. The armadillo was relocated to another area.) So, they decided a family of armadillos were the problem.

Amidst this struggle, we arrived to tour the property and fell in love with this house. We loved the huge wood deck on the back and the in-ground trampoline, but that rolled sod just made us and the current homeowners shake our heads. As we negotiated a deal, we reminded them that this would be our problem if they agreed to sell us the house. I’m not sure that sealed the deal, but I think they were thrilled to be rid of this headache.

The Solution

Rainy fall followed by a cold winter, and we kept looking at that sod, trying to figure out a solution. We talked to friends and professionals. We begin to see some large racoons on our property during the night. We googled raccoons, armadillos, and sod. And, as winter turned into spring, my husband, Roger, had an idea brewing in his head. He called our lawn and landscape guy to talk it over, and last week they took action.

They removed the old rolled up sod and laid new fresh sod. Then they staked some wire fencing flat on top of the new lawn. There wasn’t enough to cover the whole lawn, so they stopped for the night. The next morning, one piece of sod that wasn’t covered with the fencing was rolled up. They reset that one piece, then covered the rest of the lawn with fencing flat on top of it.

Some days we wake to the sod being perfect. Other days, one of these varmints find a seam to roll of one or two pieces of sod. We keep protecting the new areas, creating less and less opportunities for night play with our sod. We expect the sod will be fully rooted in about a month, when we’ll remove the fencing. Here’s hoping this solves this particularly difficult situation. We’d never heard of a problem like this before, but found that it had happened to others as we read their stories on the Internet.

We wanted to add our story for two reasons. Some of you have been following this adventure at our new home, so we wanted to let you know we may have solved the problem. And, for those who are having this problem, now or in the future, and you’re searching the Internet for solutions, we hope you find this blog post and have hope. We’re so sorry this is happening at your house, too. Here’s our solution!