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Rabbit hole ?
Lily Pilly
Posts: 3,845
in Talkback
Found this on the driveway today. It's a perfect hole with no stones piled up from digging?Never seen a rabbit hole here before, plenty of grass! it's about 3ft deep. Please reassure me if you think it is as I am worried we are about to have a land collapse. This is where be lost our huge beech tree.
Weeds are flowers, too, once you get to know them.”
A A Milne
A A Milne
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It doesn't look like a rabbit hole at all. What's the diameter of the hole??
Rabbits normally dig their holes in slopes and banks not on flat gravel drives.
Are there other holes nearby? Rabbit warrens are basically interconnecting tunnels to many holes on the surface.
Indeed I'm not thinking it looks much like any animal hole.
It's about 21/2. To 3 ins. no it's not flat NorthernLass, in fact quite steep
OH is showing the depth of the hole we have plenty rabbits but this intrigued us
A A Milne
Not sure if it will reassure you but it looks suspiciously like a rat hole!
Arggggggg! They have been working on the road this week, we have a massive drain at our gate!! What do we do? Fill it in? Leave it? Move?!
A A Milne
I must admit I was thinking rat hole because my sister gets them at the front of her house and they go through the drainage pipes. You should get in touch with the local council and they will send someone out to sort it.
If there used to be a tree there, maybe it's a hole that used to be full of root which has now rotted. What direction does it run? Unlikely to be an animal hole if it's verticwl, I'd've thought.
Blimey, now I am really confused. It really could be lots of things couldn't it
we have filled it in loosely to see if it moves
A A Milne
...fits with it collapsing downwards rather than having been excavated. Do you..er..live in a mining area?
My money's still on a rotted beech root.
We get them like that, tip some rat bait down there.
Really don't want to worry you Lily P but that doesn't look like an animal hole to me because there is no loose earth / scrapings outside. Having said that I have voles and moles which burrow up from underneath and leave neat little holes on the surface of the soil with no external scrapings. Those holes are, however, much shallower and smaller than yours.
It could be to do with your old tree. We have sunken areas of lawn where trees have been removed and the remains of the stump has rotted away - but these are wide shallow depressions - nothing like you have there.
Are you on limestone? If so, I would (carefully!) prod around the edges of the hole to see if the ground is stable. If any of it starts to give way I think you need an engineer there sharpish to see if there is any risk of a much larger hole opening up.
If you're not on limestone and / or the surrounding ground is stable I would do what you've done and monitor closely for further movement.
Really hope it's ok. What happened to the beech tree? It might be relevant if there is the chance of unstable ground there.