Your friend Jim George thinks you'd be a great addition to Ricochet, so we'd like to offer you a special deal: You can become a member for no initial charge for one month!
Ricochet is a community of like-minded people who enjoy writing about and discussing politics (usually of the center-right nature), culture, sports, history, and just about every other topic under the sun in a fully moderated environment. We’re so sure you’ll like Ricochet, we’ll let you join and get your first month for free. Kick the tires: read the always eclectic member feed, write some posts, join discussions, participate in a live chat or two, and listen to a few of our over 50 (free) podcasts on every conceivable topic, hosted by some of the biggest names on the right, for 30 days on us. We’re confident you’re gonna love it.
Check me if I’m wrong Sandy, but if I kill all the golfers, they’re gonna lock me up and throw away the key…
https://youtu.be/8pnoQ9w4HNY
Well, yes but consider this: If you lined up all the gophers in North America nose to tail
Everyone would say you are crazy ;>)
Might as well go with the bomb.
Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb bomb the gophers.
Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb bomb the gophers.
Bomb, bomb, ba-ah-ahmm…
This conversation is part of our Group Writing Series, and if you’ve hated this month’s theme of “An Open Letter…” wait until you see this one weird trick when I post the schedule and theme for February on the morrow. While all of our slots have been filled for January, that doesn’t mean that you can’t double up on a day if you have an idea for a humorous open letter. Our sign-up sheet is here.
My sister’s little terrier loves to hunt gophers. She finds the holes, then waits for the gopher to appear, and BAM!
She was a little scared when she came across the post holes Dad dug for the fence. You could see the little gears going “a gopher big enough to dig that would be bigger than me!”
This reminds me of my golfing days. My father was not a patient man when I was growing up. In his eighties, he seems to have learned a bit more patience. But in those days, little things…my, my, my. When my middle brother and I were in our early teens, Dad started teaching us golf. Dad seriously considered going on the pro circuit in his youth, before he came out of the army with a wife and child to support. He could have been the John McEnroe of golf.
There was a particular hole at the local golf course that was rather difficult. For those who do golf, you know that courses often have markers to tee off from that are in three categories: pro, men’s, and ladies’. On this hole, the men’s and ladies’ tees were on one mound that overlooked a stream and on the other side was a beautiful rising fairway. The professional tee-off site was about ten to fifteen yards further back in the woods and off to the side. Dad insisted we use the men’s tee, while he teed off from the pro markers back in the woods.
We didn’t wait for Dad to tee off first, since he was off to the side and back. My brother teed off. Then I teed off. Now, I already mentioned the geography. I was on a mound with a stream maybe ten yards in front of the mound and then a beautiful, rising fairway. I usually had marvelous, picture-perfect shots off this tee that would sail up above that fairway to the end where the dogleg was. Not this time. I totally flubbed it. I hit the ball hard, but it glanced off the bottom of the driver and rocketed right down towards the very rough roughage near the creek. As I tried to watch it’s path into this minor jungle, a gopher¹ flew up in the air doing a triple somersault and fell back down into the heavy growth. I started forward to see the situation better.
Dad saw me start forward and used some most ungentlemanly language which boiled down to, “Hey, Idjit! Don’t go forward until I have hit my shot.” So, I waited there until he had teed off and caught up with us, and then started looking for my ball in the area of the stream. When I did not find my ball immediately, Dad lit into me. (Did I mention that he was not the most patient man?) “What did you line it up with? Did you line it up with that weed over there? Did you line it up with that blue wildflower? Did you line it up with that stick sticking up over there? What did you line it up with?”
“Well, I lined it up with the gopher, Dad.”
(To be continued…)
¹ Where I come from, they use the term “gopher” for the thirteen-striped ground squirrel.
(Continued…)
“What?!? You moron, hasn’t anyone ever told you that gophers move!”
“I don’t think this one was going to move anymore, Dad.”
The ball in question was one I had found and it had splotches of pink spray paint on it. I figured it should be really easy to spot. Then again, maybe that was what the guy who painted it and lost it thought, too. But I continued to look near the stream for either ball or gopher while my brother helped look and my father culled judiciously from a rich vocabulary of abuse gained during his army years.
Finally, I saw the battered body of the gopher on the ground, bleeding from the mouth and unmoving.
“I found the gopher!”
Dad looked at me in consternation and started over as I took a line of sight from the tee through the gopher and forward, and there, directly in line on the other side of the creek was my ball.
“There’s my ball. I told you I lined it up on the gopher, Dad.”
Dad looked down at the little body and across the stream to my ball, “Well, son of a female pound puppy!” (He was more concise than “female pound puppy” of course.)
On the golf course, I have made a hole-in-one (an ace), and an eagle. I have made more than one birdie. I doubt I could count the number of bogeys and double-bogeys. And, I have one gopher.
Certain types of terriers are bred for exactly this sort of pest eradication.
Yes. And killing gophers and barking whenever an exterior door is opened as the world’s most useless alarm system are about all that dog is good for.
Not sure about gophers, our nemesis are groundhogs. A groundhog family can do $100,000s of damage to a riverbank in no time. We have tried everything to get them but usually end up with a combination of traps and snares. I would love to shot them but we have a tree hugger for a neighbor that would report us in a heart beat.
Have you tried golfing? Or a really big terrier?
Or golfing with a really big terrier.
One of the deeply satisfactory pleasures of life is unearthing a sprung gopher trap with its stiff furry little cargo, jaws open in the final rictus of death.
Or a terrier that golfs?
In my neck of the woods, the days of getting rid of gophers are over:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/04/25/gophers-vs-landowners-in-washington-property-rights-battle-furry-rodents-win.html
Thurston County, home to Evergreen State College.
Well played.
I wish I had gophers, I’d love to teach my sealyham terrier to hunt them. Alas, we have no burrowing rodents of unusual size in Austin.
I admittedly have Minnesota football on the brain this week, but based on the headline I really thought this was going to go another way.
Suppressed Ruger 10/22.
Works great.
Or have an cat / dog / peregrine falcon who lives outdoors.
An early valentine!
When we lived in Massachusetts, we could not get rid of them so give up – the gopher gas just caused him to cough a little, the hot pepper on my plants was considered seasoning, I set a trap with food in it and caught my cat, who was already too fat, my husband put a large heavy rock over one hole in our field, and it was moved neatly to the side the next day. Gives a whole new meaning to survival of the fittest.
I never see the damn beasts. I just see their destructive mounds. So shooting is not an alternative.
So you get a terrier. What they do is dig down and find it. When they find it they start barking. When you hear the barking you know where to start digging to kill it.
It’s a real dilemma. Some terriers will do about as much damage to the garden digging for gophers as the gophers do. It’s a pity ferrets are illegal in California. Something about killing birds and native small mammals or something. I think ferrets imprint on a food or foods at a young age and then eat (and hunt) whatever that was.
And don’t plant sugar snap peas. Just as you’re starting to salivate over the coming crop the [expletive] gophers will yank them under. Bad for your blood pressure, that.
“And that is all she wrote.”
But what about diversity? And isn’t that specesist? Ferrets have so much to contribute to our civilization, they are just misunderstood. A little cross species murder isn’t really such a bad thing. Californians just need to learn to be more tolerant ;>)