Gopher Smokin' 101

I think we started noticing our backyard guests in early summer. At that time, the only sign of their presence seemed to be one hole in our yard. That hole grew to two, then four. Soon there were more.

The tunneling creatures then started making their own appearance. At first, it was in the form of a dead carcass that our cat Hobbes lovingly left behind outside of or our back door. The digging culprits turned out to be the much maligned Minnesota Golden Gopher; and I’m not talkin’ college hockey here.

By mid-summer, the varmints had the run of our backyard. The upside being that these were not pocket gophers and therefore did not leave behind large mounds of dirt that we had to contend with. The downside being that the underground habitrail that they seemed to be working very hard at building now extended to our neighbor’s yard as well. Additionally, the pack of rodents had gotten wise to our cat, which diligently policed the holes – but to no avail.

At one point sometime in early August, I heard some sort of Pirate language coming from the kitchen. Tim had looked out the window only to notice that one of our “guests” was hanging out underneath our most Easterly located shade tree. From what I can remember, the report from him came as such: “Look at that son of a bitch, just sittin’ there like it’s his yard!”

He became more ingratiated over the situation as the days unfolded toward autumn. On one occasion as we watched the songbirds eat from the feeders we have stationed in our backyard, both of us noticed a gopher hanging out underneath one feeder reaping the rewards of any seed that the birds may have allowed to fall to the ground. Of course I whipped out the monocular to have a really good look. Tim simply spoke more Pirate.

By the time the sun was about to set on the month of August, he had had enough. Tim went next door to visit with our neighbor Tim. The two Tims hatched a devious yet potentially effective plan: to smoke those gophers out – once and for all.

Mind you, they didn’t decide to smoke them immediately. The nature of the gopher exodus was based on one simple Google search by yours truly. After hearing the proposition of perhaps “drowning out” the gopher population (i.e., shove a hose in the hole and cross your fingers), and then realizing that they would pretty much try anything, I decided to find instructions that would limit the amount of carcasses and also the number of digits lost on behalf of the gopher attackers (I do believe that I heard the word “bomb” and “maybe they sell those on the reservation” at least six times before I was driven to Google).

The plan evolved into this: buy many road flares. Road flares emit a noxious sulfur smell. Once the road flare is shoved smoking end first into the hole, the gopher simply leaves due to the smell – and purportedly – never comes back.

News spread all throughout the neighborhood of our gopher smokin’ event. One of my neighbors asked me “how do you smoke a gopher, anyway?” to which I responded, “You have to use a really big rolling paper,” so naturally I was thrilled to be making very corny jokes.

The night finally arrived. We had managed to acquire about 16 road flares total. This did not match the amount of holes we had to combat (our yard: 15 – the other Tim’s yard: 8), but the Tims formulated a plan of attack that included the participation of about four other grown men and three of our neighborhood’s male teen population.

At the time that the road flares were lit, there were easily fifteen people in my backyard ready to bear witness to the eviction. It was a trick of coordination to manage placing the flare into the hole and then covering it with a brick or large rock (these had been gathered beforehand, naturally). Any hole that could not accommodate a flare simply got blocked with a rock. Between our two backyards, there is easily a half an acre. Across this landscape was a sea of stinky road flare smoke, many men running around, and general confusion on behalf of the onlookers. I tried to take a picture, but the action would not accommodate my camera’s lens at twilight. My pictures were a blurry, smoky mess. Just like my backyard.

As the evening progressed and the smoke faded, we had all made the obvious joke: “this party stinks!” The crowd had grown to about twenty-five, the road flare smoke had been replaced by the smoke from our fire pit, and each gopher attacker seemed to have a certain sense of satisfaction about him. Tim stated it best using a reference to Apocalypse Now: “I love the smell of road flares in the evening… smells like – VICTORY!”

Epilogue: after further research, it turns out that they weren’t gophers at all, but instead the vicious and sneaky thirteen lined ground squirrel. I’ve heard tell that they attack without warning – it’s a good thing we got rid of ‘em!

http://www.bellmuseum.org/distancelearning/prairie/fieldguide/13linedgroundsquirrel.html