The Adventure of Developing a Gopher Repellent

The Adventure of Developing a Gopher Repellent
 

When we develop a deterrent product, we often receive calls from individuals volunteering their lawns for our evaluation, since we do not charge for the products used in the evaluations, and recently we received a call from an individual named Barney, requesting we use his lawn for our gopher deterrent product.

When I arrived at Barney’s house, he met me at the curb and even before I could step out of my van, he started telling me how glad he was for me to see his project; he was talking a mile-a-minute. It was obvious by his excitement that he wanted to get the project under way as soon as possible. We walked around to the back of his house and as I turned the corner, I stopped in my tracks; it looked like a “World War I” battlefield, with foxholes and trenches covering his whole back lawn.

Barney immediately started to explain why the “battlefield” look. It had all started with one gopher mound in his lawn; he had dug a “foxhole” type hole down to the critters underground tunnel and had actually observed the gopher in its tunnel. Barney indicated that at first he thought he could simply smoke the critter out of his burrow, so he placed a smoke-bomb in the tunnel opening. Later, after the smoke cleared, the gopher stuck its head out of the tunnel again. Barney described how he had played “bash-a-mole” with his shovel when the critter would stick its head out; but he was unsuccessful in bashing it and decided to dig more trenches and foxholes; hoping he could corner and capture the critter in one of the tunnels.

Barney took me on a tour of his backyard, starting at the foxhole where he first tried to smoke the critter out and proceeding to each hole in the order of events. It seemed that each foxhole and trench had a historical “gopher-catching” technique or event associated with it and Barney share the full history.

The soil in Barney’s backyard was a soft, sandy type and it appeared it would be fairly easy digging, but in observing the number of fox holes and trenches he had dug, I’m sure it had taken a toll on Barney in energy, time and money. Also, Barney pointed out that he had made numerous trips to the local hardware store to purchase an array of digging and probing implements and traps.

Barney explained the reason the foxholes were scattered and the trenches going in all directions was because he had been trying to corner the gopher in the tunnels by digging trenches that followed the gopher’s tunnels, and he was in the process of digging a final trench between two foxholes. His plan was to dig from the closest foxhole and follow the critter’s tunnel to the next foxhole. Barney had plugged the end of the tunnel in the second foxhole and he was sure he had the critter trapped in this final tunnel. His plan was to capture and dispatch the gopher when he caught up to it and I began to wonder what Barney would actually do when and if he came face to face with the gopher.

Barney had purchased several gopher traps and had set them in the tunnels with the hopes of catching the gopher; but it appeared one of the traps was missing and Barney felt the trap was in the gopher tunnel between these last two foxholes. The gopher had apparently been caught in the trap, and had pulled the anchor chain free and dragged the trap into the tunnel. Barney wanted his trap back and was in the process of digging this final trench hoping to find his trap, along with the gopher. So in encouragement I said, “It looks like you pretty much have it under control.” At that point a lady came out of the house; she introduced herself as Barney’s wife and with a grin on her face she said, “Boy, is he ever having fun.” She explained that he had been at this gopher hunt for 3 or 4 days and that all he talked about was catching that gopher. 

It was just a moment later that Barney excitedly held up the gopher’s nest, which consisted of straw and pieces of a chewed up plastic bag. I asked Barney how the gopher came to have a plastic bag to make its nest. He explained that when he had placed the smoke bombs in the tunnels, he had stuff a plastic bags in behind the smoke bomb to keep the smoke in the tunnel. I assumed that under cover of the smoke, the gopher decided to grab the plastic bag and put it to good use in his bedroom; the critter had lined its nest with a chewed up Walmart bag. It was not long until Barney let go with an expression of displeasure; he discovered he did not have the gopher trapped after all, it seems there was a “Y” junction in the tunnel between these last two fox holes. Evidently, the gopher had taken a right turn in his tunnel and headed to greener pastures or lawns and as Barney discovered, he did not have this critter cornered nor did he find his trap.

I left Barney, still in the foxholes, dirt flying everywhere and him mumbling something about, “I gotcha’ now Mr. Gopher.” I came to the conclusion, as I observed the backyard battle ground with its numerous fox holes, trenches, piles of dirt, shovels, rakes, probing rods and chewed up plastic scattered all around, that it is probably faster, easier and less costly in wear and tear on the body, energy, time and money to simply deter burrowing animals with our Yard Gard deterrent than it is to try to find and capture the critter in its own habitat.
 

Even though Barney seemed to be having fun, I still wondered about what he had already spent in energy, time and money and how much more the lawn sod to repair his lawn was going to cost him when the great gopher hunt was over.