April 10, 2008...4:52 pm
gopher 1, human 0 …human 1
I set the trap in a retaliatory strike against the gopher. This morning, I’d noticed the trap had sprung–a piece of shiny metal and disturbed soft garden soil clued me in. I told my husband (he promised me he’d fish out the trap if a gopher ever got caught), and we agreed to check on the trap after work today.
I got home from work before him. Curiosity besieged me (and I needed a distraction from two more rejection “letters”). So I went out and poked at the trap with a shovel, tapping it like one would tap a melon–does it sound hollow, or does it sound…full? It sounded hollow, empty. I nudged the trap and lifted it a bit with the shoevel. It didn’t seem very heavy, it seemed empty.
So when I turned it over, I wasn’t surprised. It was empty. The gopher had been quite clever, packing it full of dirt.
Gopher 1, Human 0.
I poked around the garden some more, with a shovel. After yesterday’s digging spree, putting down wire gopher baskets and then planting new tomato plants in the protective wire basket, this digging escapade was nothing. And voila: I hit what looked like a major gopher tunnel.
So I set the trap again.
The plot of the story has taken off!
Update:
OK. Gopher 1…Humans 1
A mere hour after I set the trap, I peered out into the garden. The trap was sprung–I could see the metal peeking out of the soil. I ventured out. I took a shovel. I prodded the trap.
Hrm. It felt different. I lifted it.
ACK! FUR! I got the gopher. I screamed in horror back to the house. My dogs looked up at me, startled. Is this how victory feels in battle? I don’t like it very much.
Update:
The hubby removed the trap (as promised! Thank you!), and removed the gopher. As I mentioned below in the comments–he said it was “folded in half, the trap broke its back.” Um. Arrrrgh. It was a quick death at least–I have had my fair share of half-dead rodents caught in traps (for G*d knows how long) as well as screaming, freaked out, live rodents on sticky tapes so I find that fact merciful. Was it cute? I asked my husband. He looked at me like I was crazy, “It was folded.in.HALF,” he replied. Oh.
Anyway–we reset the trap in the same spot. According to the directions on the box, if you catch a gopher, you’re supposed to reset the trap and put it back in the same spot. If you don’t catch a gopher for 3 days, then you move the trap.
So far, as of Friday April 11th (twenty four hours after catching the first (and hopefully last) gopher) all’s quiet on the garden front.
I hope it’s all done. This gopher killing thing is disturbing me.
Of course, as with all tragedies, my next thought is, “Maybe it will help my writing.”
7 Comments
April 10, 2008 at 9:15 pm
I feel like I’m watching Caddyshack all over again. The suspense is killing me
Let’s see a picture of this beast.
April 10, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Hey, what about those dogs? Isn’t their breed good at rodent-chasing? Sic ‘em on the gophers!
I once had a mouse problem in a NYC apartment, and set sticky traps. Then was so horrified to CATCH a mouse that I hired the neighbor’s kid to come take the trap away. Yuk.
April 11, 2008 at 8:00 am
Seth: you would want to see a picture of the beast?! I saw a flash of fur and freaked out. The hubby removed him from the trap today at dawn (while I dozed) and I missed seeing the trapped gopher. “That trap is brutal!” he told me later, “Just folded him in half–broke his back.” I replied by saying that it sounded like a quick death, still ugly but merciful. “Yah,” he agreed. Then I asked him if it was cute–”No!” he said, “It was NOT cute! It was folded in half!” He paused and threw me a bone. “But it was small. Like this.” His hands showed that the gopher was smaller than a rat. Boy oh boy my imagination runs wild–it seemed HUGE to me yesterday!
Leila: Oh I let the dogs loose last year in desperation, a couple times–not sure if I blogged about it here (oh here it is, a little mention) or if it’s just on my flickr. One of my dogs does NOT like to get dirty, so he just sniffed and went back inside. My other dog LOVES to hunt, and so she spent HOURS in the garden digging around, finding all the tunnels, eating dirt, tail constantly wagging. She got so involved that I had to pull her out, because at one point her entire body was submerged into a tunnel, with just a wagging tail poking out of the earth.
Still, she found no gopher.
Yes, wiener dogs are silly looking creatures–but when they’re digging, they suddenly make sense!
April 11, 2008 at 8:11 am
eeeyooo…ok, no picture please.
April 11, 2008 at 10:02 am
yikes. at least it was a quick death.
i once had a “mouse motel” trap because the mice had evaded the old-fashioned kind with cheese…big mistake. i woke up one morning to hear a desperate squealing — the mouse had stuck to the trap, and was scared to death. i had to put the poor thing out of its misery, and spent the next few days wracked with guilt, feeling supremely stupid for using the sticky traps.
so it might have been worse.
April 11, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Seth: Yup.
bookfraud: yes, the mouse motel type traps are horrendous! they’re considered “more humane,” but i don’t see how it really is! you’ve brought up a memory of mine, too! a number of years ago, a pest control person came by and laid down sticky traps for mice.
well. the house didn’t have a mouse problem. apparently, the house had a RAT problem. so there was this rat, stuck to a sticky trap, half unglued, making its way across the kitchen floor (must have taken him hours). O.M.G.
i called the pest control folks–and the rat still died, albeit after being tortured.
since then, i’ve stayed away from the sticky traps (and also of course poison–that’s an ugly ending too). plain old traps.
and well, you all know that i spent over a year refraining from killing this gopher. i really hoped he would just go somewhere else, naive me. or maybe share the garden and not pull down everything in its path.
April 13, 2008 at 7:23 pm
A gopher problem is one thing, but if I catch a mouse and/or rat going through my box of cornflakes, you can bet your sweet petunias I’m getting out the backbreakers–I’ll see those nasty mofos in hell!
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