Whack-A-Gopher!

I thought someone was playing a joke on me a first.  I found what appeared to be a shovel full of dirt pitched into a flower bed.  There’s nothing but weeds in that bed, but I plan to rectify that soon.  The next day I found another pile of dirt, this time in another bed.  I didn’t think it a joke that time, just kind of strange.  When two days later I found two more piles in the front lawn I became livid.  Someone was intentionally leaving piles of dirt throughout my yard for what I could only imagine was nefarious reasons.  I went to ask my neighbor if he happened to know what was going on, not because I suspected him (yet, it was good to eliminate him has a suspect), but because I hoped he might have seen the culprit.  That’s when I found out it was a gopher.

It would appear that Hollywood has misled us about the nature of the gopher.  Theses aren’t cute, furry little creatures to be loved and adored in animated films or as puppets.  Quite the contrary, they are evil rodents hell-bent on destroying your lawn and all the plants you so lovingly cultivate throughout.  And they’re hideous, just look at this picture!

My neighbor said this particular gopher had traversed his lawn and two other neighbors before him.  He’d attempted to kill it with gopher bait, but alas, he only succeeded in running it over to my yard.  Darn the luck!  I needed a plan.  Fortunately, gophers let you know where they are, I suppose because they are stupid animals. This picture shows not only where the demonic hell spawn's tunnels were, but also the direction it was going in.  Fortunately away from my rose bush!  I figured that if I dug down into the mounds I should be able to find it’s tunnel (how’s that for an example of deductive reasoning!).  Once there, I could then bait the sucker and end it’s lawn destroying life.  And in fact, I  got out my shovel and began to dig.  Unfortunately, the hole kept getting bigger and I wasn’t finding the gopher highway I was looking for.  The hole I was digging was actually more unsightly than the gopher mounds! 

There was another potential problem I hadn’t considered when I started my demolition plan of death.  Holes unattended can lead to unintended consequences.  Take for instance an incident that happened after some soil samples were taken from my yard.  The dog somehow managed to fall into the hole the sampler left and was unable to get out.  Hm.  Not one of her brightest moments.  We shot this picture in order to laugh at her  and ridicule her for the rest of her days.  Funny thing is she doesn’t really care.  Still a good picture.

I filled in the hole and devised another murderous plot.  This one was less laborious.  I planned to grab a glass of iced tea and my shovel and plant my butt in the rocking chair out front.  Then I would wait.  As patiently as I needed to, I’d wait.  As soon as I saw that incarnation of evil push up another mound I was going to take that shovel and play Whack-A-Mole with it, only it would actually be Whack-A-Gopher.  This plan seemed good to me as it satisfied the blood lust coursing through my veins!  It sated that primal urge to hunt and to kill!  So, I told my wife my idea.  The only problem was I told her in front of my 13 year old, animal-rights activist daughter.  It’s her contention that all of God’s creatures have a right to life.  Dang!  I couldn’t follow through with the extermination after that.  The gopher had it’s stay of execution.  Besides, it looked like he was making his way over to our other neighbor’s yard, so… But, do you know how that gopher repaid me for the mercy I showed it by sparing it’s miserable life?  The next morning, I woke up to two new mounds.  Dang gopher!