One Pocket Gopher Can Patrol Up to 800 Feet of Tunnels : Garden Gnawed Away? Go for Help

It is the season of long, lazy afternoons, of hours spent enjoying the sight of new flowers and shrubs sprouting everywhere--then sometimes wiggling and disappearing suddenly into the earth.

“There is no doubt that this is the time of the gopher,” said the county’s deputy agriculture commissioner, Bob Wyatt.

“It’s growing time and planting time,” he said, “and back-yard gardeners are out everywhere, and every day we get more and more calls from them complaining about gophers making burrows in their lawns and eating up the roots of their prize plants.”

Wyatt can’t tell whether this year is worse than most, “except to say that as we close in on what used to be open spaces, naturally gophers are going to become more evident, just like other wild animals.”

There are three major U.S. species of the burrowing rodent: the plains gopher, the plateau and the Western, which is found in California. All are called “pocket gophers” because they have small, fur-lined pouches on their cheeks to carry food or dirt from their burrows.

The creatures are 7 to 12 inches long, including tail, with strong claws on their front paws for burrowing. They have two large front teeth above and two below, which they use to eat roots and dig burrows.

As with most rodents, these teeth continue to grow as long as the creature lives, forcing it to gnaw constantly on any hard object it can find. If the gopher didn’t, the teeth would grow about 10 inches a year, probably curling around to pierce the gopher and kill it.

Wyatt and other animal experts agree that gophers are much less numerous than they seem. People who see little mounds of earth all over their lawns, and feel the soft spots in the ground where there are tunnels about 8 inches below, and watch favorite plants die as their roots are nibbled away--or they’re pulled right into the ground--thinks that they’re surrounded.

In truth, all that destruction is probably the work of a single gopher.

“Gophers are loners who spend almost all their lives underground,” Wyatt said. “Each one has his own tunnel system, and he doesn’t want any other gophers around. He’ll fight a stranger, unless it happens to be mating season.”

In many cases, a neighborhood cat will put an end to the ravaging, but there are other ways. Wyatt said nurseries and feed stores sell several types of gopher traps.

Don Noyes, a specialist at Roger’s Gardens in Corona del Mar, said poison is probably the most effective weapon. Nurseries sell several products, such as various grains mixed with a little strychnine.

“You should find one of the mounds of loose dirt the gopher has pushed up on the lawn or in the garden,” Noyes said. “Dig into the dirt until you find the hole leading into the tunnel and push the poison product down in the hole and cover it up.

“Make very sure that children and pets cannot get at it, and if the gopher happens to come up above ground to die after eating the poison, dispose of the body so that dogs and cats can’t eat it.”

Although a gopher’s teeth are very sharp and can inflict painful wounds, Wyatt said the animals are not carriers of diseases that are a threat to humans, as is sometimes the case with squirrels.

Western Pocket Gopher: Geomyidae Thomomys Size: 5-7 inches.

Color: Usually a shade of brown.

Description: Short-legged, thickset, small ears and eyes; like the mole, has a short bobtail and virtually no neck; burrowing rodent native only to North and Central America. Strong claws on forefeet; large, protruding upper front teeth; poor eyesight.

Food: Does not hibernate; collects food in cheek pouches and stores underground; eats roots of grasses, sugar cane, young banana trees; also buds, farm vegetables, nuts and other succulent plant growth.

Habitat: Solitary, patrolling up to 800 feet of tunnels.

Mating: Normal litters of 2 to 6, as many as 9; born four weeks after mating; weigh no more than one-fifth an ounce; born naked, blind and helpless, ears and eyes sealed for five weeks; can leave nest after two months.

Good points: Draining and production of rich, fertile soil of Western plains.

Bad points: Hillsides with too many gopher runways can cause landslides; considerable alfalfa crop damage by devouring the roots.

Source: Collier’s Encyclopedia, World Book Encyclopedia, Complete Field Guide to Northern American Wildlife.