On Sat, Apr 27, 2002 at 09:45:33PM -0500, Phil Ethier wrote:
>
> >The current set doesn't seem to be eating the
> >bait; I think I have managed to breed smarter gophers.
>
> Hey, you should apply for a grant to study the evolution of burrowing
> quadrupeds. Instead of getting rid of them, make some money on them.
Actually, I used to do that sort of stuff-- got a degree
in Wildlife Biology. I wound up studying grizzly bear habitat.
There's no money in this sort of thing. It's the reason
I became a programmer; the projects I worked on kept
getting canceled due to lack of funds.
(yea, I know you were kidding)
It turns out that the lawn isn't all the gophers have been at: we
discovered the other day that they have been eating the roots of our
apple trees. We planted some heirloom cider apples three year ago,
so we'd be able to make better hard cider. They all looked great and
were starting to leaf out a couple weeks ago but when we went to weed
them saturday some of them were looking all dried out and didn't have
many leaves. Those were the ones that the gophers had eaten. One had
a burrow right under the trunk, and I stuck my hand down there and there
wernt' any roots left. The gophers ate em all!
Little bastards, this means war!
I tried the lye+bleach deal that was suggested here on the gophers in
the lawn saturday and the orchard yesterday, so far none of them have
come back but its only been a few days.
The area I live in used to have a lot of orchards and vinyards in
the late 1800s; there are still some small abandoned orchards around.
We've found a number of old fruit trees on our property including the
biggest old apple tree I have ever seen.
But everything we plant gets eaten-- from below by gophers, from above by
deer, and if it fruits then birds (jays, woodpeckers) and chipmunks eat
the fruit. My wife can't plant anything decorative around the house
'cause it'll get eaten by the deer; our garden works only because its
fenced off and everything is grown in raised beds with wire mesh
on the bottoms. Still haven't eaten any cherries from the cherry tree;
woodpeckers(!) take them all.
Racoons ate all the apples last year, not only at our place
but all our neighbors as well. I don't know how commercial/homestead
people 100 years ago managed to harvest anything... maybe they
just had so much that the critters couldn't eat it all, or
they had their kids spend the nights outside with a .22.
Eric
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