“Hey Robin, I got the gopher in my trap”!!
“Wow, thats big! Let me get the camera. Hmm, I need it held up so I can get the true scale of it’s size”.
“Are you putting me in the picture? I’m going to get the shovel so you can get the scale of it that way”.
“I think it was better when you were holding it”.
**Sigh**
“I think this is the biggest gopher I’ve caught in the garden”.
“Well maybe you should go measure the gopher hole so I have the true size of that too”.
“Don’t tempt me, I will”.
How did you catch it, a trap or what. They are taking over our yard.
Would you believe I just snagged it out of the ground by hand? 🙂
For really large gopher holes, I have one Cinch trap like this which we bought at a local farm store. (Mine isn’t as nice–it’s painted and tries to rust). It has an almost 100% success rate, but I only use it on those rare occasions when I encounter gopher holes so big you can stick your arm down them.
For most gopher and mole problems, I have a large collection of Trapline gopher and mole traps. I have more misses with these, but they are much easier to set and more durable. I forgot one buried in the garden this past winter and it was fine when I located it. There are some good videos on YouTube demonstrating how to correctly set the Trapline traps.
I find that moles are easy to catch within a day or two. Gophers are more difficult, and almost impossible to catch in late summer when they relocate their tunnels several feet underground.
You look so enamored with the little critter that I’m surprised you didn’t make it your latest pet.
It was pretty cute. If they weren’t so destructive I wouldn’t mind a colony of them. I could do a little Meerkat Manor documentary with gophers instead. 🙂
..eww..gross! I have never seen one before..one of the advantages of snow covered ground in April! haha..snow wins again 🙁
Well, I wouldn’t expect you to have seen one of these unless you happened to take an interest in lawn pests while traveling through western North America. I believe this is a smooth-toothed pocket gopher, which is only found on our edge of the continent.