I'm not ... all right.
Today, on the very day that my Cyber Monday purchase–two gopher traps–shipped, I find my nemesis in the yard, D.E.A.D, dead. Yes, ding-dong, the wicked rodent’s dead.
Friends know that as a rule, my garden is a welcoming place to wildlife. Heck, this year I even called off hostilities against the paper wasps. (It turns out they are great allies in the war against tomato worms, which, as a rule, I also don’t kill. I just pluck ’em off the plants and chuck ’em over the fence.)
But my garden is my life, in darkest times the bright spot that keeps me going. (And my dark spots are abysmal, think Laurentian Trench.) There is no coexistence with an animal, no matter how cute, that is laying waste to my organic Prozac.
As this is war, I first dug trenches and lined them with wire to exclude said rodent. There is a good chance, however, that I may have trapped it in the yard. At any rate, the destruction continued. Then I resorted to poison baits, a variety that is low in toxicity to other wildlife, and it seemed, unpalatable to gophers. No dice. More mounds in my garden; more plants devoured. Next came the wire traps, which my husband, hearkening back to his childhood, thought were sure to work.
Nope. The wily little shit simply buried them. I tried baiting them with carrots and peanut butter, which succeeded in giving the animal a treat before he buried the metal intrusions in his tunnel.
A couple of times, even though I knew it wouldn’t work, I shoved the hose in a burrow and tried drowning the sucker. This of course, made the ground nice and soft and easy to excavate new burrows. How nice of me, no?
Despair…
I contemplated strychnine, for the gopher and if that didn’t work, for me. But strychnine is highly toxic and can poison other wildlife and the groundwater.
On Monday, I ordered a pair of very well reviewed traps, my last resort. In the meantime, I figured I’d set out the traps again. “Reset” as my husband had put them out (again) on Thanksgiving. “Happy Thanksgiving, Mr. Gopher.” At this point, I imagine the critter was dangerously close to laughing itself to death.
Out into the garden I go, shovel in hand, greyhound at my heels. And what do I spy with my two little eyes? A fuzzy something among the half dead wildflowers. I approach, expecting it to flee. Now, I have heard of people killing gophers with a shovel, but even so armed, I don’t think I could do it. (Maybe. I was getting rather desperate.)
Critter doesn’t move. I poke it with the shovel. Nothing. And a sad Hallelujah chorus starts up in my head. I scoop the dead thing up with a shovel, noting that it seems pretty fresh. Later, when I dig up the traps, I find a small tuft of fur in one sprung trap, but there’s no sign of injury on the animal. My guess is it finally got into the bait or it died of some obesity related illness after having devoured half of my wildflower garden.
Here’s the funny thing. When I showed the corpse to Mr. Greyhound, he wasn’t particularly interested. In fact, he gave it a feeble sniff and then looked mildly disturbed.
I wonder if he was channeling my little angel terrier. She would have been appalled by the death. A gentler being there never was…
I, on the other hand, am not canceling my order for super-duper-rodent killing traps. My guess is the departed left many survivors.
