The (Bizarre) Brochure on Unidentified Backyard Objects: A Gopher Story

First of all, you can find a video of almost anything on YouTube.

Today I’m going to talk about aliens in our backyard.  Wait, what?  Well, not really aliens, but at first I thought they were.  

Last weekend I had been out in the backyard, doing some light cleanup, so I knew kind of what it all looked like.  Then two days later, actually it was nighttime when I was out there with the dog on one of her nocturnal perimeter checks and potty breaks, I noticed something odd against the back fence.  We have flood lights back there so I could see pretty well.  No, it wasn’t an intricate crop circle in the big patch of weeds, although that would have been impressive.  It was what looked like two buckets of sand had been dumped about five feet apart.  I did a double take.  I walked closer.  I blinked at the piles.  What had happened?  What was I looking at?  Who or what had made these things?  

I got the dog back inside and went back out with my phone.  I have a flashlight app and I could take photos.  Well, what I then discovered was that these piles against the fence and in the path of the floodlights weren’t the only mounds.  There were others in the shadows.  And they were bigger and longer.  What the??  

Had someone snuck into our backyard and deposited new dirt or sand?  I knew that was near impossible.  The gate is always locked and the fence too high to really jump over.  And who would want to do that anyway?  But still, I thought immediately of the G word, but I didn’t want to even go there.  Was someone playing a trick on me?  Had the neighbors behind us somehow funneled a bucket of sand into our yard?  The dirt didn’t even look like the dirt that is there.  It DID look like sand, and we don’t have sand in our yard.  Nothing like it.  

I told Bill what I had seen and I dared to utter the word.  Did we, could we possibly have…..gulp…..gophers?  I googled the images of the photos I had just taken.  Oh dear lord, that’s what came up.  Gophers!  Now, remember, we have raccoons, skunks, skinks – they’re kind of like big lizards – then we have regular lizards, micro lizards, really lizards of all sizes, and snakes.  We have squirrels, ground squirrels, rabbits, birds of course, hawks, owls, I think I’ve seen a bat once or twice.  There are coyotes, deer, and neighbors have talked about seeing bobcats, and there have been bear sightings on the other side of this small canyon.  So, gophers?  Sure, why not?  We already live in this kind of chaparral ecosystem.  

Now I was vaguely familiar with what and who gophers are, and what they do.  They dig holes.  They are pests, right?  I’ve heard the stories that they are destructive to plants and some household systems, but I needed more details.  So I started reading about them. Bill and I were both scanning through several articles online.  Well, they like to feed on roots and like to destroy plants, trees, you name it.  They undermine the consistency of your garden.  And they have been known to pull whole plants down into their holes!  This brings to mind the adorable and seemingly innocent gopher in the film, “Caddyshack.”  This cute little guy dances, he’s furry and huggable, but then why is the groundskeeper constantly trying to kill him?  Can you imagine a destructive gopher on a golf course?  Beautiful smooth lawns plagued by random holes?  And not the holes that balls go into.  No, I have no illusion that our gopher or god forbid gophers plural do any cute dancing.  

Now the area where the piles have appeared are mostly around my camellia plants.  There are a few mature plants that are at least as old as I am.  And then I have planted several new ones.  Some are of moderate size and were kind of pricey.  They were an investment. I have no desire to see any of them wilt and die because their roots were chewed up.  And then I’m also worried about the integrity of the massive oak tree just beyond our fence.  I figure if we have gophers, the neighbors do too, and since gophers like to eat roots, well, you see where I’m going with this.  

So far I haven’t spoken to the people who live behind us with the oak tree.  Our fence is taller than I am, and so there’s no chance for human interaction.  I also don’t hear people out there very often.  We can see them from our house though, through the windows at night when both our lights are on.  I did ask our next door neighbor if they had this problem, since the piles of dirt go up to the fence on that side of our property.  And yes, as I suspected, the gophers have been busy over there too.  Our neighbor, Ed, has actually gotten a humane trap and trapped one of the little fellows, but it seems there are others.  Or maybe the one he trapped found his way back. He showed me where he pulled the dirt away and exposed the tunnel entrance on two spots.  He thinks they come from across the street.  Our neighbor’s house over there sits on a bit of an incline and the front has been known to have some holes with animals living in them.  I thought they were ground squirrels.  Who knows?  When I mentioned the gophers, Pearl, one of my mom’s former caregivers told me the gophers usually showed up this time of year.  Go figure.  I don’t remember them as a child or young adult, while I was living here.  But then things do change. Things evolve.  And not always in a good way. 

I found a video on YouTube of a gopher digging a hole.  I mean, wow.  First of all, you can find a video of almost anything on YouTube. And really, this video of the gopher was pretty amazing. They are pretty good at what they do.  Very efficient and quick diggers for sure!  It’s amazing how much a little creature like that can accomplish in a short period of time.  Like the little ant moving the rubber tree plant, as in the song.  Nature never fails to astonish me.  

We are against using poison for most things.  The poison would stay with the animal and maybe pollute our ground as well as anything the animal came into contact with down the line.  I also worry about the safety of our dog.  She seems quite taken with trying to dig through the soft dirt left on the surface.  Maybe that deters the gophers?  They can’t like dogs too much.  She must be seen as a predator?  Brownie did end up peeing on one of the piles of dirt the other day.  I fully support her choice in this matter.  Go for it!  I’m hoping the smell of the dog pee went down into a hole.  

There are several things that can deter gophers that don’t involve poison, although I don’t know how successful they might be.  Right now we’re expecting the arrival of two small humane traps to get here.  We fully realize this is a marathon not sprint.  I’m sure that the gophers will take a while to warm up to the idea of going into the traps, and then I’m not too happy about taking the trap way up the hill to release them.  These aren’t little pets and they certainly aren’t the “Caddyshack” gopher.  As much as I don’t want them in my yard eating my plants or compromising our dirt areas, I sure don’t want to stress them out either.  I’m a big sap, aren’t I?  Yeah.  But in the end, it’s either them or my yard.  Stay tuned for updates on this debacle.  I always knew that apartment living was easier.  I just didn’t have the long list of what could go wrong!  For now I need to take the dog out and survey how many new holes we have since yesterday.  I’ll let you know.  

Well, that’s all I’ve got for today.  Next week, we’ll tackle another topic together.  I hope you’ll join me.