OPINION
Published on March 10, 2012 By Big Fat Daddy In Misc

 

 

When we came back from Germany in 1983, we were fortunate to move into the newest housing area on Fort Ord, Abrams Park.   The houses were still duplexes and the yards were still small and all the other things about living in government housing were still true, but for the first time in our family's history, we had a house big enough for our whole family to fit in it comfortably.  In fact, it was a pretty nice, two level, house.  Never mind the strangeness of the floor plan (you literally had to stand on the toilet to close the door in the master bathroom);  we really liked the house. 

 

The lots were small, only about ten feet wider than the footprint of the house.  The front yard was nice;  part of it was  used up by the driveway but it was still about ten yards deep.  When we moved in the grass was patchy and uneven but with regular care it soon cleaned up and started looking really good.  I never liked yard work;  still don't, but when my dad, The Chief, retired from the Navy he became a yard fanatic...maybe because there were no yards on a ship...I don't know.  Anyway, for some reason I took great pride in our yard, especially the front.  Maybe it was because I was gone so much and when I came home the grass was the first thing I saw... so I cut the grass diagonally, cross-cutting and leaving a really sweet checkerboard pattern;  the bald spots filled in, the dandelions disappeared, the scrubby patches evened out...it looked great.  Now, I am no fan of geraniums, but we had a big bed of them under the windows in front of the house and as much as I dislike them, they did add color and we worked at keeping up with them.

 

The backyard, though very small, was chain-link fenced-in and had a nice little patio.  Along the wall of the house in the backyard we had the biggest, brightest, most colorful gladiolas.  Someone else had planted them there long before we moved in but Each spring they popped up and provided a smile.  Every year they seemed to be bigger and brighter.

 

Then one day I came home from a week away and found little mounds of dirt in the front yard.  Other yards had shown signs of gophers but I had thought ours was immune for some reason...it wasn't.  So my first thought was to drown them out.  I pushed the garden hose down the hole closest to the house and turned the water on full force.  Before long I saw signs of water seeping up from the other holes.  I rembered the Chief telling me it was hard to drown them out so I fed more hose into the hole...and more hose...and more hose.  If any of you have done that same thing, you know what is coming next.  I had at least half of a fifty-foot hose down the hole and got no more water out of the other holes than I had at first.  I recalled how the VC had constructed their tunnels with cut outs and high ground and run off tunnels and thought that this gopher was obviously of asian descent.  So I decided to pull the hose out and try a different approach.  If you haven't tried this approach before let me explain something...the water follows the path of least resistance, and collapses the wet dirt around the hose as it passes through.  Twenty feet of hose displaces a couple hundred pounds of dirt and not an ounce of it wants to let go of the hose.  It took me and my three teenage sons more than an hour and a half to get the hose out of the hole.

 

A few days later I tried a gas bomb.  A package of them.  You strike one of a tube like a road flare and stick in the hole.  I broke the first one trying to get it to start.  The second one fizzled and sputtered by never really got burning.  I struck the third one, expecting to have difficulties like the first two so I wasn't as careful as I should have been.  The third was the poster boy for perfect flare performance.  As soon as I struck it, it fired off like gangbusters, spraying sulphur and sodium nitrate into my face from a foot or so away.  I immediately closed my eyes and stopped breathing (that good Army training) and tossed the little bugger across the yard where it burned furiously for a few seconds, throwing its gas harmlessly in the air.  I turned into what breeze I could find just as the second flare - the fizzler - decided to fire up and filled my world with even more of the nasty stuff.  I have no idea what happened to the fourth of the set...don't much care, either.  It took a while to wash my face and hands and rinse my eyes enough so I didn't smell like a burnt match.

 

After a few more days  I was in a store in Seaside called Monte Mart.  I was just looking around and saw a display for gopher control.  One of the items on sale was a "fool-proof" trap.  If ever there was a fool in need of proofing, it was me.  I bought a couple of them.  They were round.  The instructions said to set the springs and slide the whole trap down into the hole.  The trap body was a heavy wire frame in the shape of a tube.  When set, there were two heavy wire spikes loaded up on the springs.  There was a latch release like a mouse trap has that released the spikes when Mr Gopher slipped into the tube.  The spike stabbed the gopher from both sides and voila!  Pull the whole rig out of the ground and toss Gopher and trap and all away.  Foolproof.

 

The good news is that the traps worked like a charm.  Mr Gopher got as far as getting his little nose to ground level when the trap tripped and nailed him.  The bad news is that when I checked the trap, both of my little girls were right there with me.  My youngest begged and pleaded to keep the cute little gopher as a pet.  Little gopher was making squealy little noises and was wiggling and the girls thought he was the cutest little thing and they would take care of it and they would feed it and they would find a cage he couldn't gnaw through....and on it went.  I couldn't pull Mr. Gopher out until the girls went away, and Mr. Gopher wasn't cooperating...if he would just die I could put an end to the whole discussion.  Finally I had to explain how the trap worked and that Mr. Gopher was not in any way a candidate for pethood.  I shooed them away and looked at the pitiful rodent and asked him why he couldn't just kick off and make everything easier for all of us.  I didn't want to pull him out while he was alive, and I didn't want to risk a bite...so I got the hose and drowned him in place.  He quit squealing, I pulled the trap out, and put him, trap, and all in the trash.  Everything worked out ok...except my girls thought I was a monster.  The gopher holes healed up, the lawn returned to its former glory, and eventually the girls forgot my role as a gopher-killer.  But I won't ever forget the tears on those little faces.


Comments
on Mar 20, 2012

Gopher Killer!

I am softer than you. I would have let it go.  Even knowing what it did to the yard.  We have voles and moles.  Or did.  With the exception of an occasional squirrel, that is the only thing our cats do catch.  And I just pick up the carcasses and toss them.  They are not moving when I get to them.

on Mar 21, 2012

Thanks, Doc...good to see you around.

on Mar 21, 2012

There are all kinds of contraptions still to be tried ... lots more fun to be had. A couple of years ago we had something digging up our yard too and being overly humane, we decided to buy a trap/cage combo especially when we could get a three-traps-in-one deal. The first night we were unsuccessful and puzzled as to how the food could be gone and the trap not sprung. Being an engineer I soon had the mystery solved. The second night we put the food (cat food that was recommended with the cage purchase) in the center of the cage realizing the culprit was smart enough to go behind the trap and freely munch away. We were awoken with a clatter the next morning accompanied by a continuous raucous squalling. We had caught the local feral cat and he was being as regressive as it gets. We had to replace the sod under the cage when he got through letting us know what he thought of the ordeal. The only thing left to do was draw straws to see who was going to let him out. Two weeks later … more holes … another trap … yep same catch, so we just gave up. Whatever was digging the yard is long gone (probably ROFL) at the idiots and the cat who proved to be so amusing.

on Mar 21, 2012

Tess:   Good story.  Around here, we have a few feral cats running loose but they keep the rodent population in check.  Back then, in California, we had a couple of cats but I killed them because I didn't know that cats loooooovvvveee anti-freeze and I was careless with a container of it.  Sigh...shoulda fed it to the gopher.  Thanks for stopping by, hope to see you again.

on Mar 28, 2012

Tess - I agree with BFD!  Thanks for a laugh (dealing with a 430 page audit, I needed it).

on Mar 28, 2012

Well, the little wild bugger is still around and has made friends with one of my cats. Everything was well until my cat learned to shimmy up the fence posts and became an inside/outside cat. It took her almost five years to learn how to escape the 'back yard'. We had a battle of wills over this idea for a month or so but as usual nature prevailed and she retained complete freedom, a tale for another time perhaps.

on Mar 29, 2012

on May 05, 2012

GirlFriendTess
Reply #3  GirlFriendTess
This is a mild version of the red tabby we caught hahaha.

on May 05, 2012

I
Really
want
That
Cat....

on May 05, 2012

Well you just let me know ... and I will put the infamous trap back out, hahaha. But with my luck ... I probably would catch a bear or a tiger instead in which case they stay locked up.

PS - You are going to have to come and get him though, I don't think he would ship well hahaha.