Strange Animal Burrows on Your Shoreline?

Have you wondered about the mysterious sunken-in area near your shoreline?

Is it a nascent sinkhole?  A wrinkle in the tectonic plates?  A landing pad for UFOs?

Close.  Most likely, it’s where muskrats have burrowed into your property, and where their burrows have collapsed.

If you live in Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, or Iowa, and you see strange burrows in your shoreline or riverbank, it’s probably a muskrat burrow.

They enter your yard or hillside through your shoreline, and tunnel inland.

Once they’ve found all the buried treasure they’re interested in, they vacate the burrows, which usually collapse sooner or later.

You probably only notice the burrows once you see the sunken-in areas.  At that point, the muskrats are probably gone and you’re left scratching your head as to what caused the damage – and how to prevent it from happening again.

The solution to muskrat damage is to install a riprap shoreline with muskrat control: a layer of wire mesh between the riprap stones and the filter-fabric layer underneath. This combination of fortification can stand up to muskrats and other pesky creatures (and to Mother Nature and Father Time).  Only that can prevent them from enteridigging into your shoreline and into your property.

We, Lakeshore Guys^®, offer muskrat-resistant shorelines.  You can read more about them here, check out this case study that shows a muskrat-control job from start to finish, or contact us today.