The Gopher Wars

There used to be places in my front lawn where it felt unsafe to walk.  There were little dips and gullies everywhere where the ground had caved in over the gopher tunnels.  A gopher leaves a hole in your lawn, and a little pile of dirt from his excavations, and over time your lawn looks like moguls.

I always thought gophers were country folks; they lived in huge numbers in the field not far from here.  But when a developer disked the field, the gophers moved to the city, which is to say my yard and the yards of my neighbors.

Now I have nothing against gophers personally.  In fact, I think they are rather cute; they have little buck teeth, and if you catch sight of one in the light of day, he is always squinting.  I do hate the idea of killing off little myopic, new-wave prairie dogs; but people in my neighborhood did not like the holes and the little mounds of dirt that you find in the early morning on the lawn.  So, some time ago I found myself joining in a battle to exterminate the gophers.

At first, I just swore at them, but that did not produce any results.  Then I stuck a hose down one of the holes, and that produced a swampy lawn and a fresh little pile of dirt left by another gopher the next morning.  When that didn’t work, I resorted to more lugubrious methods.  We were really into bragging rights around the neighborhood; I went all out.

A gopher trap is a small tin box with springs and sharp things, with an opening just big enough for a gopher to wander in.  You set it place it in the gopher hole, being careful to cover it with dirt so no sunlight shows in.  Well, the first time I went to check the trap, it impaled my hand.  That was maddening, and I blamed the gopher, for the same reason I blame my wife when I run out of gas or thump my head on the open cupboard door.  I couldn’t possibly be that dumb or that careless; it must be someone else’s fault.

Chemicals, smoke bombs and bait, whatever I could spend my money on at Home Depot; and what I got for my trouble was a revolving balance on my Visa and a fresh pile of dirt or two every morning as another gopher — or perhaps the same wily little devil — skirted my remedies and pushed his way around under my lawn and to the surface.

Once I went after one with a shovel, but I got a sprinkler line instead, and a new hole and a fresh pile of dirt the next morning.  The only success was quite by accident.  On my way out the door one morning to play golf, one of those critters stuck his head out of a hole right by the porch, and I nailed him with my six iron, my only good shot of the day.

Once my dog caught one.  Waldo appeared at the door with this broken creature in his mouth.  I thought he was going to give it to me.  What a stupid thought; that dog never fetched a ball or a newspaper.  When I tried to take away the dead gopher, the dog gave the first real defiance I had ever seen, by growling at me and staring me down.  He was just showing me his trophy before going off to do whatever dogs do, and wherever dogs go, with deceased gophers. 

As he trotted off with the gopher’s limp head hanging out of one side of his mouth, and the hind feet and tail dangling out of the other side, I decided right then and there to admit defeat, that I just didn’t have what it takes to wage guerilla warfare in my own yard.  It is no good to go after gophers when you do not even have the skill set of a rescue mutt.  I put away the traps, stopped over-watering, ditched all the chemicals, and retired my golf clubs.

My only consolation was that my neighbor Bill was faring little better.  It seemed all we talked about for weeks on end was the one that got away.  When you get right down to numbers, Waldo was the only successful gopher catcher.  We had done as much or more damage to our yards as the gophers had done; and I knew this was really getting to me when I started asking global questions like, “Whose lawn is it anyway”?

One weekend my wife and I had a getaway, but I did not want to fall completely behind in the gopher wars.  With tongue in cheek I made a sign for the gophers that read NO DIGGING.  I attached the sign to a stick and shoved it into one of the gopher holes.  The sign was probably bigger than necessary for a gopher, but I wanted to make sure that Bill could read it from his yard.  When we returned, I discovered that no gophers had dug in my yard all weekend, whereas Bill had a new pile of dirt.

It turns out that a neatly printed sign in the yard is just as effective as any other method I have used or ever heard of to get rid of gophers.  Believe it or not, we never saw evidence of another gopher in our yard.  As God as my witness, I did not know gophers could read.