My Ever-Escalating War Against Gophers

As I explained to the guy at the hardware store, fighting gophers is, as in any war, a continuum of escalation. Why go completely scorched-Earth when all it may take is the bare minimum of prodding?

The gopher and mole shelf of the hardware store is nothing if not a continuum: repellent pellets, noise-emitting solar-powered stakes, death-from-above spike traps, spring-loaded wire-to-the-abdomen traps, spike-to-the-face traps, straight-up poison, gas bombs, vehicle tail pipe garden hose adapters. Yes, you can buy a thing that will allow you to pump exhaust fumes into your local gopher burrow.

Gophers and moles do what they do because they're gophers and moles and don't have much choice. But what they do—burrow and tunnel incessantly—is spectacularly destructive to gardens and lawns and pretty much any other thing that a human being might attempt to do with some plot of dirt. Burrowing rodents invite a grisly end like few other pests: rats eat garbage, mice shit in cupboards, gophers attack food supplies from subterranean networks of caves. But, like I said, it's an escalation.

As a gardener relatively new to gopher country, this was an unexpected problem. The very best thing one can do is to make one's garden gopher-proof in the first place, which usually means lining the bottom of a raised planting bed with chicken wire, so that roots can grow as they like, but gophers and moles can't get to the really good stuff. Live and learn: Maybe two weeks ago, the first dirt mounds started popping up around my beds and, soon enough, within them. The onions and garlic went first, of course, but the bulk of the damage came from the gophers just burrowing every which way like the idiots they are, occasionally taking out a tomato or pepper plant because it was in the way of some haphazard destination.

Gophers are idiots, yes, but they're also very well-adapted idiots—albeit not quite to the point of their mole (and naked mole rat) kin—which is why that hardware store shelf is so full in the first place. Pocket gophers, which is the particular variety known for leveling gardens, come equipped with super-tiny eyes and ears, as well as super-sensitive tails and whiskers. One especially weird feature is the pocket gopher's ability to close its mouth behind its teeth. This allows them to plow through the soil without having to get dirt in their little mouths. Moreover, their teeth grow continuously, so that as the gophers grind away through all of this continuous chewing, the teeth just grow back.

To put this adaptive excellence in perspective, consider that pocket gophers are the only known natural force capable of limiting the growth of the quaking aspen, a variety of super-adapted tree capable of extending itself through massive and incredibly robust root systems, which give rise to expansive clonal colonies (the largest on Earth). As a result of their finely tuned underground lifestyle, a gopher might live to 12 years, whereas a rat would be lucky to see 12 months.

"Quaking aspen clones are virtually impossible to kill," notes a National Wildlife Federation species dossier. "Individual stems can be destroyed by humans, wildlife, and disease, but the belowground root system is resistant to almost all of these factors! Pocket gophers, which feed on roots, seem to be one of the few creatures able to curtail the growth of aspen groves."

I started casually, blocking runs (when I could find them) with wooden stakes. Then I tried water, a la Caddyshack, which, while satisfying, is mostly known to induce gophers and moles to dig more fervently as they restore the damaged tunnel network and/or escape the flood itself. Generally, damaging and destroying the runs themselves doesn't get rid of the animals, but it can point out which burrows are active and which aren't as the active ones will show signs of repair. The upshot is that this gives us a solid target for the next escalation stage in our gopher eradication campaign. We know where they live.

Back to the hardware store. Yeah, I bought poison. I could have tried other things, friendlier things, but I just waited too long trying to stomp their little mounds and will them away.

Gophers are the precise opposite of will-able creatures, however. They stay and they dig in and they keep living and chomping tomato plant roots. As best exemplified by the gopher's naked mole rat kin (gophers are cute), evolution isn't about looking good, it's about digging in and eating some roots. In the warmer months it means getting together and making little gophers, but otherwise the life of a gopher is solitary. A quiet life alone in some tunnel with some roots to eat and maybe an onion, which would be cool for a gopher.

Anyhow, all of this crossed my mind as I lurked there in front of the gopher and mole killing supplies (well, not so much the gopher science, but that gophers are cute, kind of beatific, and are really just doing gopher stuff). But I still bought the poison.

The rodent poison of choice used to be strychnine. Strychnine is a neurotoxin and causes convulsions which in turn lead to asphyxiation. Now it's zinc phosphide. Or, rather, it's zinc phosphide mixed up with a peanut (somehow). The basic idea is that the zinc phosphide, when it comes into contact with atmospheric water or the gopher's stomach acid, undergoes a chemical reaction to create phosphine, which is poisonous (though not neurotoxic, which is something, I guess). In most preparations, zinc phosphide is combined with antimony potassium tartrate, which induces vomiting. Rodents, however, don't have a vomiting reflex.

Phosphine by now has become so overused—as a killer of not just rodents but insects as well—within the agricultural industry that in many parts of the world, newly adapted pests are emerging with high levels of resistance to the chemical, according to a 2012 report in Science. So far, resistance has only been found in bugs and worms, but whether rodents are also becoming immune to its effects hasn't been studied well. Given the supreme adaptability of gophers and moles, it doesn't seem terribly unlikely.

As of Tuesday afternoon, I'm still not sure if my peanut-zinc phosphide has done anything. The internet advises that I should have a pair of gloves on hand for the inevitability of gopher corpses materializing around the yard. I find myself in the unlikely situation of really hoping my chosen solution doesn't work. It's possible. I didn't do a whole lot advance analysis to determine what gopher mounds are new and active vs. old and disused. Or maybe one of the cats will handle it before the poison does. They're pretty good at killing gophers, actually, but despite the cat-linked body count—my neighbor reports at least five gopher "offerings"—there hasn't been much of a decline in rodent digging activity.

What I mean is that there may come a time where further escalation is needed.

For $17.99, I can indeed purchase an adapter that will fit on the tailpipe of my truck and allow me to screw on a garden hose. I don't need to explain further. It's sort of a nuclear option: comprehensive, complete. The blood loses its ability to transport oxygen in sufficient amounts for life, and that's sort of it. Passing out. Even for rodents especially well adapted to low-oxygen environments, like gophers and (especially) moles, it should eventually do the job. And the gopher war will be over for… a month.

That's about it. A month. They'll return and return and return and, eventually, it will be winter. A cold end to a grisly war.