Turf rolled back like a carpet, or dozens of small cone-shaped divots that weren't there yesterday. It looks like vandalism. It's a skunk or a raccoon digging for grubs — and here's the part that matters: the animal isn't really the problem. The grubs are. Deal with those and the digging stops on its own.
Free Estimate — Call or Text 717-379-3248Go to the edge of a damaged patch, take a handful of grass, and pull straight up. If it lifts away freely, like pulling up a rug, with no root resistance at all — that's grubs. They've eaten the roots off underneath, which is exactly why an animal was able to peel it back.
Then fold back a one-foot square and count what's in the top few inches of soil. You're looking for fat white C-shaped larvae with brown heads. A few is normal in any Central PA lawn. Around ten or more per square foot is where damage shows and treatment is worth doing.
The pattern tells you which animal, which occasionally matters — mostly it tells you how urgently to look for a den.
Small, neat, conical holes an inch or two across, scattered across the turf. A skunk noses out grubs individually. If you're also getting a musky smell near the deck or shed, see skunk under your deck.
Larger sections of sod rolled or flipped back, sometimes in long strips. Raccoons have hands and they use them. Often paired with attic noise. See raccoon in your attic.
Starlings and crows working a lawn for grubs leave a fine scatter of small holes rather than excavation. Usually the mildest version, and a useful early warning that grub numbers are climbing.
Ridged runways pushed up through the turf rather than holes dug down into it. We don't treat moles — worth saying plainly so you're not paying us to look at something we don't handle.
Brown patches in a Central PA lawn have several possible causes, and grub treatment fixes exactly one of them. Before anyone treats anything:
We check this before quoting. Treating a dormant lawn for grubs is a waste of your money, and we'd rather tell you it's going to rain than sell you an application.
This is the part that decides whether treatment works. Grubs are the larvae of Japanese beetles, masked chafers, and related beetles. They hatch in mid-to-late summer and feed hard on roots through late summer into autumn, which is when damage and digging appear. They go deep for winter, feed again briefly in spring, then pupate.
Where the turf has been peeled but the soil is intact, a lot of it can simply be pressed back down and watered — if you get to it quickly, the roots that are left will often take hold again. Where it's been shredded or the roots are gone entirely, it needs seed. In Central PA the right window for that is early September, when soil temperature and moisture give cool-season seed its best chance before winter. We schedule core aeration and overseeding only in that window, and it books out by Labor Day most years.
Full-season lawn programs on a typical Harrisburg city lot run $200–$400 a season; a quarter-to-half-acre lot in Lower Paxton or Colonial Park runs $500–$900. Grub treatment is quoted with the property — text a photo of the damage to 717-379-3248 and we'll tell you what you're looking at.
All of the City of Harrisburg (17101–17104, 17109, 17110) plus Penbrook, Paxtang, Steelton, Highspire, Colonial Park, Lower Paxton, Susquehanna Township, and Linglestown. Also Hershey, Hummelstown, Mechanicsburg, Camp Hill, Palmyra, Middletown, Carlisle, and Lebanon.
We'll tell you whether it's grubs, drought, disease, or something else — free, usually within the hour. If it's grubs we'll tell you the right month to treat. If it's a dormant lawn that needs rain, we'll tell you that too and you won't pay us anything. Lawn and wildlife under one license, one phone number.
Call or Text 717-379-3248