While the carpet looks like the dogs are guest staring on That 70's Show, they aren't. And though they may look like they've been out hunting gophers, they weren't. They were simply getting filthy for their own selfish fun.
They lost my sympathy when they totally decimated my sweet potato plant and ate the evidence. All further evidence of them in our little personal eco-system makes my jaw clench painfully. The sweet potato wasn't the first fatality, of course. It's just that the sweet potato was so glorious and magnificent and ready to harvest. I had babied it and admired it all summer. There were, of course, the six cauliflower starter plants that just completely disappeared from the garden in the dark of night. Not to mention about five broccoli starts and honestly, I can't remember what else.
The gophers still have Miranda's sympathy and somehow, we can't seem to help blaming her for their continuing existence, despite Mick's best efforts.
We aren't trying to live-trap.
We've had it.
All except Miranda. And the dogs, who frankly, aren't doing their jobs, not earning their keep.
We have lost about $200 worth of tulips and other spring bulbs. THREE TIMES NOW! This last spring we thought we had them beat. The gophers are so much smarter than we gave them credit for. And we are less smart than we credited ourselves. Obviously.
We have had tulips planted in the two long beds that run parallel with the front and side border of the vegetable garden each spring. Every year, we think "This is the year. This is the year that the tulips will multiply and we will be able to split them up and continue with two more borders, and encompass the vegetable garden with a mass of spring color.
But as I weed those beds each summer, I discover--NOTHING. Not a bulb in the bed. Not one.
So we thought, mistakenly, that we were smart last fall. We bought rolls of window screen and Mick emptied the beds of dirt, lined them with screen, covered each end, put the dirt back in and we planted our bulbs. The tulips were gorgeous this spring. And the bulbs had completely disappeared by early summer. It turns out that those little miscreants, when encountering an obstacle, the equivalent of prison fencing, will wait until no one is looking, leave the safety of their tunnels, walk over to their desired feeding grounds and DO A SWAN DIVE! And eat. Eat non-stop. Not a bulb left. Once again, $200 gone. For those of you not keeping count, that's about $600 worth of gopher food.
So there are the vegetables, the tulips and other bulbs ( they leave my gladiolas alone, though, poor lonely glads), but that is not all. Oh, no, because there is the yard. Or in our case, yards.
I don't water in the summer and we have an ugly proliferation of weeds anyway, but I do mow. Thanks to the gophers I get to mow through mounds and mounds of dirt piles ( yes, yes, I try to even them out, but you know that is only going to do so much). I get to abuse the poor lawn mower and I end up caked in dirt, my teeth gritty. Thanks to the gophers. As I mow, dust clouds float around the yard, looking like their own weather systems.
Mick hates these gophers. He would poison them, but as mentioned before, our dogs will never be commended for their brains. Their brawn, their gladiator spirits, yes, but brains...it's kind of like trying to find summer tulip bulbs in the flower beds.
I honestly don't remember what-all Mick has tried to eradicate our gophers. I know we had garlic sticks for awhile. And I know we still have gophers. The latest has been a set of four traps ( he found them on the internet and it sounds like it was quite the sales pitch, but...).
The gophers had been busy totally screwing up what we refer to as our "immediate back yard" (as opposed to the far back). It is unsightly. Worst than that, it's insulting. Those gophers are insulting our intelligence, mocking us, and they are winning. So Mick started baiting and setting his four new traps in the immediate back yard. Trial and error. Reset. Reset. Reset. Not one dead gopher. Not even a maimed gopher.
And then I came home from work yesterday to find that Mick has gone mad. One gopher, (whether it is alive or dead, I don't know, but Mick swears it must have crawled off and died somewhere and I think it is watching him from some secret vantage point and smirking), ran off with one of the traps. Mick went to check his traps and now there are only three. So he dug around. And now there are still only three. And when I got home, the neighbors had pulled chairs up to the fence and sat watching my husband use their metal detector and dig and search and dig and search and dig and search. Mick found many nails, screws, and scrap metal. He didn't find, however, any trace of a fourth trap. Or any dead gophers for that matter.
I am afraid that it is going to come down to explosives. I'm afraid that I'm going to come home and find that I'm married to Elmer Fudd and he is chasing the wabbit. I am afraid.
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