Gopher Lunch
When artists Dave and Linda Elder built their dream home on a bluff overlooking the shoreline, they thought they were building on a vacant lot.
Little did they know that under their untended hillside, a population of gophers had long been been living out their subterranean lives. Nor did they know that one day they would make a hero out of a black cat plucked from the pound, a natural-born ratter whose more than 200 gopher kills are memorialized in a neon sign on the Elders’ home.
The Elders completed construction on their Vista del Mar home about 10 years ago. All went well until things started disappearing. Like flowers, grass, fruit trees and a vegetable garden. The Elders loved to grow vegetables--almost as much as the gophers loved the Elders loving to grow vegetables.
The vanishing tomato plants, cornstalks and sunflowers were early clues. Then came the case of the disappearing peach tree sapling.
The Elders came to realize they had built smack on top of a crime-ridden residential lot. The charge: petty theft, gopher.
But that all happened before Tom the cat appeared on the scene.
“Before Tom, we were losing all our plants to gophers,” Dave explained. “We tried all of those home remedies, including putting eight truck flares down gopher holes and igniting them.
“It was the most wrong thing I could do. There was smoke coming out of my neighbor’s driveway, curling out from the other side of the asphalt in the street. It looked like Old Faithful.”
When they brought Tom, a black alley cat, home from the county’s Camarillo animal shelter, it wasn’t for gopher control.
“We just wanted a cat,” said Linda.
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However, as the Elders watched the rose bushes keel over after gophers had nibbled away at their roots, they also noticed that Tom would try to score points by leaving the occasional gopher on the front doorstep.
The numbers piled up. Dave began to praise Tom.
“ ‘Good cat,’ I’d say to him.”
Tom seemed to bask in the praise, for his prowess improved. Soon, the count was into the high double digits.
A sculptor and art professor at Cal State Northridge, Dave, who heretofore had never made a promise to a cat, told Tom: “Tom, if you ever get 100 gophers, I’ll cast you a plaque.”
Tom soon laid his 100th gopher on the Elder doorstep.
Dave was a man of his word. A short while later, in the couple’s garden facing the street, a bronze plaque was planted.
“Home of Tom the Cat Who Has Killed Over 100 Gophers--1991,” read the sign.
“I modeled it on the California historical monument sign. But instead of the California bear, it has a gopher head.”
The sign also bore the name the artists had given their home, Crystal Hawk. It’s no ordinary house: A dozen of the Elders’ sculptures, some stylized totem poles, some evocative of Chumash maidens, dot the site. Many are visible from the Ventura Freeway.
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Rodent exterminators, who say gassing is the most efficient method for eradicating gophers, agree that the Elders’ place was a gopher utopia.
“They like residential areas with vegetation and untended hillsides. They love landscaped yards that occasionally get watered,” said Tim Cooley, who owns a pest control company in Thousand Oaks.
Cooley was impressed with, and maybe a little envious of, Tom’s skill, which he figured was rare in a house cat.
With Tom’s talent, plus some assistance from underground wire baskets, the Elders’ vegetables and flowers flourished.
After the plaque was mounted, Dave worried that Tom’s enthusiasm might flag, so he held another heart-to-heart with him.
“Tom,” he said earnestly, “if you make it to 200, I’ll cast you another plaque.”
Eventually, Tom delivered. Another bronze plaque was cast. By now, the couple had learned that Tom was no garden-variety alley cat.
“Tom, an Eastern King Ringtailed Raccoon Cat--200+ Gophers--1992,” read the second marker.
Dave again took Tom aside for the by-now-familiar pep talk--but this time it was about 300 gophers and a third monument.
“It seemed so much better than putting poison in the ground,” Dave said this week as he looked back on Tom’s accomplishments.
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But tragedy lay ahead.
Before Tom could reach his 300-gopher goal, he used up his nine-lives quota. He died during a daredevil attempt to outrun a Plymouth Voyager in the street next to his historical markers.
With old Tom out of the picture, the Elders’ property reverted to gopher-heaven status. Their flowers and vegetables began anew to disappear. Something had to be done.
A year later, Tom’s paw prints were filled when the Elders’ neighbor presented them with a female cat they named Dust Bunny, and then later, the younger brother of Dust Bunny, named Skeezix.
For Christmas in 1996, Linda presented Dave with a state-of-the-art neon sign, a gift modern enough for the coming millennium. This one, though, has hooks for flip numbers.
That way, the Elders can keep a running total and not have to continually mount markers in their garden. Earlier this week, the purple-and-aquamarine neon sign read “Gopher Count--268,” testament to the developing skills of Dust Bunny and Skeezix. Dust Bunny takes credit for 60; Skeezix, a kitten with what Dave believes will be spectacular killer instincts, lays claim to but two.
Dave works with both cats, pointing out fresh mounds of earth, whispering encouraging words. “To watch our cats, it’s like watching a National Geographic wildlife special in miniature,” he said. “It’s just a cat stalking a gopher instead of a tiger stalking a gazelle.”
