Diggin’ School : Santa Paula: An army of gophers invades a playground, creating what may be one of the county’s worst such problems.

Hordes of gophers with a taste for dirt have sunk their teeth into the playground at Glen City School in Santa Paula, turning sod into Swiss cheese and janitors into exterminators.

“They’re everywhere,” fourth-grader Andy Piche said.

Although Principal David Luna said the playground is beginning to look like a thousand-hole golf course, nobody really wants to kill the varmints. After all, they’ve been there long enough that the school’s mascot is a gopher.

“When I first got here I thought, ‘That’s kind of weird,’ ” Luna said of his school’s nickname, adding that “I think they’re more prolific than rabbits.”

Ventura County Agricultural Commissioner Earl McPhail, a Santa Paula resident, said the elementary school’s gopher problem is “probably one of the worst in the county.”

The rodents are the scourge of farmers and landscapers alike, causing thousands of dollars in damage every year.

“They are a destructive pest,” McPhail said. “Not only do they create burrows, they eat plants and their roots.”

Which may be a reason they settled at Glen City, where the shrubs are always watered and the lawn is lush.

The problem has gotten so bad that school maintenance workers have enlisted a gopher specialist from Los Angeles to figure out a way to kill the animals.

Drowning them and dropping gophers bombs have been considered, but a special trap placed in the hole is the best bet, McPhail said.

The dead are taken out with the trash or entombed in their holes forever, said Randy Chase, Santa Paula Elementary School District assistant superintendent.

Chase said his experiences with gophers began at a school in Fresno, where groundskeepers used an underground pesticide to push them out.

But when the noxious fumes blew away, the critters came back.

“They’d be out dodging cars in the parking lot a week later,” Chase said.

One fear of parents and school officials is that the toothy varmints will take a bite out of a student. About four years ago, teacher Carolyn Ishida said, a child was bitten and had to be treated at a hospital.

And last year, several students reported sprained ankles from stepping in gopher holes.

Kathy Jenks, director of the Ventura County Animal Regulation Department, said a gopher bite is nothing to worry about because the state does not consider them to be carriers of rabies, like raccoons.

But bite victims should get tetanus shots, she said.

“They’ve got sharp little teeth,” Jenks said.

Still, fifth-grader Danny Dillon regards the gophers as interesting playmates. He has calculated their population on campus at 105.

“I counted all the holes,” Dillon, 11, said. “I saw a baby one that was as big as a pack of gum.”