I know this is from out of left field for the environment page. But here goes: I am having a problem with gophers on my lawn. I have tried everything I've heard of so far---Juicy Fruit gum, repellants, poisons, flooding their holes with water. Nothing works. No matter what I do, I see new fresh mounds of dirt every morning( their calling card). Do any of you have any ideas?
The war on Gophers: (Or why we left San Diego in a hurry)
So, you’ve tilled and turned and planted your flowers and veggies, now you think you can sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labors right?
You go out one morning and find to your dismay that things are starting to disappear or die and there are ugly piles of dirt pushed up all over the area and realize you have gophers!
Now the war starts, you head to the nearest garden center and ask how do I get rid of them? The fun also begins here as well, if you ask five different people how to defeat gophers you will get at least ten different answers.
So you head home with the latest humane gopher deterrents such as a guaranteed ultrasonic noisemaker that will drive them out of the yard and the County, as well as a concoction that smells bad to them just in case they’re deaf. You spend the afternoon repairing the damage, installing the deterrents, and replanting the lost plants and retire thinking all is well.
Next morning you arise to a disaster! The sonic deterrents have been pushed out of the ground, and the smell bad concoction seems to have attracted more of the gophers and the plants you replaced yesterday are gone. Back to the garden center, attempt to return the sonic deterrents with no luck (no refund policy on electronics) so you pick out some different guaranteed to work items; more plants and head back to the battleground.
You place the cute little wind driven pinwheel doodad that makes a clicking sound that gophers don’t like and plant the gopher bane plants that you were assured would cure the gopher problem but were still environmentally friendly, and fail again.
At this point you’re starting to figure out that if you’ve killed any gophers it was because they’d laughed themselves to death or died from over eating all the plants you’ve planted for them.
Ok, time to regroup, so you head back to the garden center and get a few more items and a lot of free advice from the friendly folks down there. So you try chewing gum on them, it doesn’t get rid of the gophers but the dog likes it and gets to go to the vet.
Next you try running the hose down the hole for a while, yard gets soaked and you flood the neighbor down the hill out, and your insurance company gets to settle up with him. After things dry out you try laundry soap and the hose, now you and the neighbor have soapsuds everywhere. Insurance company informs you of a rate increase.
Next you try placing a lit highway flare in the hole to smoke them out, the neighbor calls the fire department, and they write you a warning about uncontrolled burning.
Then your other neighbor who is still on speaking terms with you suggests pouring some gasoline down an open hole and lighting it, says it works for him.
So you give it a try and it causes the gophers to just dig in other places, the friendly neighbor suggests that you take the shopvac and blow the fumes further down the hole and then light it.
When you do this several things happen in short order, your yard sort of turns itself over, your downstream neighbors patio slab decides to move to the other neighbors yard and you decide to go with a pool, lots of concrete and learn to garden in containers.
During this time your insurance company has dropped your coverage, you have made the fire departments most wanted list, your yard looks like the aftermath of hurricane Andrew and…. you still have gophers.
Gardening is a great thing, just never weaken.
