Le Morte d'Gopher

A couple of years ago a gopher lived in the lawn.  He built his mounds and probably did more aeration than the lawn puncher guy.  Then he was gone and the mounds disappeared with the Winter rains and the lawn went back to just being a lawn.

Then this Spring another gopher arrives.  The mounds show up again.  All is well, we can live with this one too.

But, but, this guy decides to move a few feet to the south and now there are mounds amongst the rose bushes.  Barb's rose bushes.  Bushes she has watered and trimmed and encouraged for 20 years.  Yes, those roses.

Do gophers eat roses?  If they don't we are back to free soil preparation services.  Hmm, per Google, yes they do.

War is declared.

We go and get the tools of war.  We find a two pack of cute green metal springy traps, highly rated by Amazon buyers.  I install the first trap.  They have to go into a tunnel.  By the way, gopher tunnels are not as easy to find as you might think.  Yes, they are under the mound, but as we found out, usually off to the side and pretty well plugged.  But they are there and can be found.  I set the trap and put it into the tunnel.  Then we bury it per instructions.

Will this be it?  We will check the next day.

The next day we go back to the tunnel.  Is he dead?  Is the trap tripped?  Oh, and where is the trap?  It seems it's gone missing.  I get out the metal detector.  I find a couple of coins, but no trap.

More research.  Apparently it's a good idea to tie a string to the trap and attach the string to a stake.  Back to the killing field.  Find another tunnel.  Set the second trap and insert it.  Push the stake into the ground, bury the trap and wait for the next day.

Dawn breaks and the string on the trap still leads placidly into the tunnel entry area.  I pull on the string.  It comes out of the ground.  No trap!

More research.  It seems that string is not the thing, wire is recommended as "a gopher will chew through the string with its last breath."  Hmm...  Last breath?  Is it dead?  We wait a couple of day and sure enough new mounds show up. 

We know more about setting traps, so if we get some more, we might win the war. 

I'm at golf on Friday and I've become friendly with the ground crew.  I talk to one of the guys who is fixing a loose board on a bridge.  He has a commercial gopher trap in his cart.  How's that work?  I ask.  He gives me general training and then...  offers me the trap!

The beauty of this trap is that it has a huge metal flange with the trigger mechanism and no gopher is going to run off with it.

I worried as the distance from the trigger is a long way from the catching part.  Just how big are these guys?  But I set it.   We find a fresh hole, insert the trap, cover it up...  You know the drill by now.

"We have to pick up the trap in the morning.  Young kids walk by and might be attracted to the trap!"  This is from Barb -- you'd think she'd be more protective of the roses than some stray young kid.  So in the morning before golf I go and look at the trap.  It's been sprung.

I grab it and pull it out of its loose burial debris.  I'm really expecting the trap to be empty or, worse than that, have a half dead gopher in it.   But nope, the guy has been caught.  Killed is probably a better word for it.  I hope it happened quickly.  The gopher is huge.  I unload the trap and he falls out into the green waste barrel.  Since picked up and off it goes to the central city receiving.

"I wonder if there might be a second gopher," Barb ponders.