War and Victory!

Please be aware that we at the Sommers domicile have officially declared never ending war without quarter on our eternal enemy, the infernal pest known as the Gopher. Our four acres is so riddled with holes that it sits perched, ready to fall another level, en masse, like Rotterdam or Mexico City.

I have surveyed the battlefield and it looks grim. Swiss cheese like portals dot the denuded landscape like a hormonally challenged adolescent's pockmarked skin.  Once we kept the rodent population somewhat at bay, when my wife understood the utility and importance of barn cats. But now, after losing a large number of our felinous friends to coyotes, our remaining cat lives indoors in sweet luxury and spurns his predacious duties. We have trapped and flooded and all the normal stuff, to no avail and decided to resort to near nuclear measures.

Today we decided that we had had enough. I consulted Bruce, the smartest man I know in these and many other matters and he gave me the zyklon B, industrial strength cure.  I went to Hanks and bought a half a dozen road flares. We dug down into the hole and inserted the lit flare and then shoved the end of the leaf blower in at high speed, flooding the whole tunnel system with the deadly gas. Les ran around tamping the holes in the yard where smoke was rising with a shovel. I was a trifle nervous about the flames blowing back and the gas engine that I held in my arms exploding.  Was I imagining little gopher shouts alerting the clan that  resistance was futile and that the end was surely near?

After the gopher extermination  campaign I dropped a little moth ball in the hole as a reminder, like Bat Masterson might leave an ace of spades pinned to his vanquished enemy's lapel.  Thar's a new sheriff in town, spit.

*

We will see how this works. I did some reading on the subject and also heard about castor oil pellets and juicy fruit gum having a killing effect.  The juicy fruit was a new one on me, apparently they  eat the foil too . Maybe they kill themselves blowing bubbles, you got me. But I am willing to try anything at this point.

*

This is a gopher that the cat brought in today . He doesn't kill them anymore, likes to play with them and let them run around the living room. Leslie catches them and lets them go two miles away near our mail box. Anyway they are kind of cute when they aren't tearing up the yard. We may get a Jack Russell next.