Everyday Life- Between the Landlords and the Gophers

Between the Landlords and the Gophers

      Recently, the conflict between nature and civilization placed me in the middle of a dispute between my landlords and an unknown quantity of gophers. The gophers were digging tunnels and throwing large mounds of dirt and rock up onto the grass. This is apparently what gophers do. I felt intimidated by the ability of such small animals to move so much earth so quickly. The condition of the yard was also deteriorating because the landlords have their own substandard gardener whose method of dealing with the gophers was to throw more sand and rock on top of their holes. The gophers simply made fresh holes elsewhere in the yard.  The landlords wanted the gophers gone and left me a pitiful but torturous trap to use. I shuddered and hoped I never had to spring such a medieval device on a living creature.     

     At the time we moved in   to the house the gophers were only digging in the back yard. When the landlords cut down two of the three trees in the back, it seemed to scare the gophers away for a couple of weeks. When they returned, it was in the front yard. The gophers were making bigger mounds more quickly, as if exacting revenge for the day the earth above them shook with the violence of chainsaw and woodchipper. In their fresh new front yard digs the gophers chewed up the lawn and the flower beds from underneath. They were making use of the tunnels along which ran the sprinkler lines, so they didn’t need to dig more. They were just pissed. By this time so was I. The predator pee was too expensive and “iffy.” So, I tried drowning them out, hoping they would hate it and move to another yard or back into the field behind the house. I would find the freshest mound and dig until I found a hole. I put the hose right into the hole and turned on the water. The first time I tried it water shot out of another hole about 3 yards away. The next morning I went out and found newly built mounds of freshly dug earth. The gophers just moved over and made new little dirt volcanoes erupting out of the calm grass. My friend Jake, a former student from Georgia who was visiting looked at the yard and said, “I’ve never seen anything like this.” It looked like a miniature of a trampled on mine-field.

     Finally, after saturating the ground and running up the water bill, I gave up and went to the hardware store to see if I could find a humane solution. Poison and kill-traps were all they had. I bought what seemed like a strong, quick-killing trap and as the cashier rang it up she said, “A lot of people have been buying these lately.” I felt a little better about what I had to do thinking that there must be a local gopher epidemic. I still hesitated for days, hoping that if I stopped chasing them they would stop chewing up the yard. Finally, I had to dig between two recently made holes and plant the trap in the tunnel. This trap was concealed under a molded black plastic hood, which kept the light and dirt off the catch and made it appear to be part of the dark tunnel.  The instructions said that if you hadn’t caught one in three days you should move the trap. Instead I waited three days to dig it up. There was a gopher, smaller than I remembered them being, dead in the trap. I felt terrible. I wished that I hadn't done this, and hoped this was the only gopher.

Unfortunately, the largest mound so far was built-up on a new hole the next morning. I hesitated for a couple of days, and then planted the trap again. This time I couldn’t make myself dig it up for almost a week. When my wife threatened to do it, I went out immediately and "took care of it." This gopher was bigger than the first one.  Luckily, there have been no new holes since then, and the yard and flower beds are looking green again, if still pock-marked and uneven.  I don’t know what to do with my feelings of guilt about killing an innocent but destructive creature. I am confused because I feel a kinship with all life and yet I know that territorial matters in nature are often matters of life and death.  I am becoming a more conscientious omnivore. I did not kill these gophers for food directly, but the landlords threatened us with damages if we didn’t “USE THE TRAP! NOTHING ELSE WILL WORK. WE’VE TRIED!” We need money for food, unlike gophers.

I really am sorry, gophers. In the human world people “own” land, as strange as that must seem to you who work it.  This isn't my land either.