Freeze Gopher

After moving to the country so to say a year ago I have a serious situation going on here, when we first moved in my efforts were spent on putting in a nice lawn, well after a few months the grass was green and looking good then all of a sudden there are mounds of dirt popping up all over the yard.

Cindy’s Dad just walks around and kicks the dirt mounds level, well under these dirt mounds are holes and around these holes is a bare area where my grass used to be, Dad explains “Gophers! There are miles of gopher tunnels running underground in this valley and there is nothing you can do but put up with them” OK now this sounds like a challenge to me and we begin the task of going over the options I had to control these varmints.

Dad finally got tired of explaining and said “You could always kill them if you want” I suddenly had the sound of Kenny Loggins in my head singing “I’m alright…Nobody worry bout me…Why you got to gimme a fight…can’t you just let it be?” well I couldn’t let it be and Cindy I think is now looking for a Caddy Shack hat for me.

 In the words of Bill Murray’s character Carl Spackler I have a mission a license so to say “License to kill gophers by the government of the United Nations. Man, free to kill gophers at will. To kill, you must know your enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint. And a varmint will never quit - ever. They're like the Viet Cong - Varmint Cong. So you have to fall back on superior intelligence and superior firepower. And that's all she wrote.”

Well as you know already this is easier said than done. My trusty dog Dixie a longhair dachshund (she should know all there is to know about gopher catching ---right) and I began our mission.

We started with an air rifle, OK I hear you laughing now just like the neighbors did but we were successful once, OK this worked so we moved up to a pellet gun to gain the upper hand, this worked once too, OK so it took a long time and a lot of patience and I did see more dirt coming up from the gopher holes than I saw gophers going away, heck we even had one that would pop up just to laugh at me afraid to pull the trigger because Dixie was faster than I, I think I even saw him give me the finger once.

Now we are studying the art of Gopher Trapping, and we just knew this was going to be a breeze, and “In the immortal words of Jean Paul Sartre, 'Au revoir, gopher'” Carl Spackler said this too.

I borrowed a few traps from the neighbor who gave me brief instructions with a grin, so here I am in the garage gathering up shovels, rakes, sticks, and all the implements of destruction that my leather gloved hands could carry, I dig the holes and after a few tries I finally find an actual gopher tunnel, I carefully set the trap and cover it up, after setting the stake in the ground with the chain attached----can’t lose the borrowed traps now can I.

Now here I go to dig more holes and bury traps, I think I mentioned I am working on a nice lawn right, I was so excited to go out and gather all the gophers next morning only to find all my traps were set and the tunnels filled with dirt, everyone got a kick out of this because this is what gophers do when you tick them off by messing with their tunnels.

After about six months practice I have learned to dig around the mound so I can set the plug of grass back into the lawn almost unnoticed, I now look for two tunnels and set a trap in each one, my trusty dog Dixie and I have had some success but as Cindy’s Dad said there are miles and miles of tunnels under this valley.

I think all the dirt is being moved up into my face here. “Freeze Gopher” I am now in the process of making some little clay friends for our gopher buddies. Who's the gophers ally His friends the harmless squirrel and the friendly rabbit.Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh----AAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!!!!!

No Gophers were harmed during the writing of this article, a lot of harmful gopher thoughts and the pride of the writer maybe, but no actual gophers were harmed while I was writing this----I Promise