h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Help we are being invaded by gophers. I tell you they are everywhere. I have three holes in my flower garden, some under the deck, in the fire pit and about 30 holes all over the yard. They are not afraid of me. My neighbors must think I am a crazy lady, stomping my feet and trying to scare them. Ooooooo pretty scarey alright. I need to find an environmental way of discouraging these pesky critters from eating all my flowers and strawberries. I am just about to charge admission and lead kids around my yard. Any suggestions???? Three big fat ones watched me as I planted some more wonderful plants for them to feast on as soon as I go inside.
Hoppa

Get a kite which is clear and has the image of a bird of prey printed on it and suspend it above your garden...hopefully, gophers being fairly silly, they'll think it is a real hawk and get out.

Well, it might work.

Thats a new one. Now the trick would be were and how to suspend the kite.
Hoppa

Thats a new one. Now the trick would be where and how to suspend the kite.
Hoppa

I read on another thread that you have, or have access to, kids.

Simply get them to fly the kite and in ashort period of time that most powerful but least understood of physical phenomena - the attraction between kite and unclimbable tree - will take over.

The kite will then be attached to the tree serving the dual purpose of scaring off the gophers and reducing any future expenditure on kites

Here is an interesting little fact I just found out:

I was reading a book called Visual Intelligence (About how our brains create images from the information our eyes give it)

One part was taking about how you can show a picture to gophers (or maybe it was meercats or lemmings or something) and trick them into thinking it was a hawk. Here is the trick though. All you need is two ellipses, which I will represent as --- (a long ellipse) and | (a tall ellipse).

If you construct your picture like this:
--|-
And move it from left to right, the gopher/meercat will think it is a hawk.
If, however, you construct it like this:
-|--
And move it left to right, the gopher/meercat will not be a afraid, presummably it doesn't register as a predator...

Cool, eh?

Thanks for the info. I will try it and let you know how it went. Any other ideas, please let us know
Hoppa

Another predator of a gopher would be a snake of some sort? If you got a length of hosepipe which was brightly coloured it might serve as a deterrent..although this is pure speculation, as I'm not sure I've ever seen a gopher much less evicted one.
The hawk idea works on hares and pigeons, though.

Get yourself a machinegun. Solves most problems... Or maybe you could poison them??

You could always try placing your hi-fi speakers in their holes & blasting them with Barry Manilow records!!! Slightly more kind that the last solution

In my opinion, I'd prefer death by machinegun than death by Barry Manilow-records...

Yes silence is better than Barry ol Buddy. Machine guns, not what we were looking for. Friends of ours have offered to pellet gun them but I can't do that. Gross. I can get so close to them even when I am yelling and stomping my feet, they are only an arms lenth away. We have no trees and it is just heaven for our little gopher invaders. 5 babies were born in the last 48 hrs they look so tiny and cute but the other half of me wants them gone. They ate the tops of all of our pole beans and my sunflowers.
Thanks for the good ideas.

Hoppa

Good thing you have never had a problem with gophers. My friends are starting to think I'm obsessed with the damn little critters. yeh they are so cute at first and then they turn into annoying little pests
Sorry for going on and on see what they do to me!!!
Hoppa

Never mind babes, we had a similar problem with grey squirrels which in the UK are nothing more than vermin, we solved it by default, our cats found out that the tails are great for flossing, at least, that's all we found!!!. I also used to use penny bombs, which are very small balloons that you fill with water & I launched them from a catapult. I got to be quite a good shot. Perhaps you could try that if penny bombs are available in your neck of the woods?

I think the trouble is the gophers are stupid. I copied the appropriate sections of the Landlord- Tenant act and the Mining act, proving I'm in the right; posted eviction notices at the entrances of several gopher holes and they just don't seem to GET it. I am now going to build a billboard and create an advertising campaign for "Western Canada's Premier Gopher Resort", charge exhorbitant fees and cast out the riff-raff with peer pressure. Once the upper-class gophers see how popular the place is, they'll decide it's lost its cachet and bugger off. Think it'll work?
PLT, Mick.

I wish we had gophers. We have to put up with rabbits, bandicoots and possums. Everything that they can't reach is eaten by Ben (our singularly loveable but destructive labrador). Still, there's room for everything in this world, and the gophers do sound seriously cute, if sometimes extremely irritating. Good on you for not trying to exterminate them.

Walter of Colne

Kites won't work. Fake birds of prey won't fool the gophers. They won't leave as long as there's plenty of fresh food that you're providing them.

You'll have to trap them. Go to a hardware store and buy a big Hav-a-heart trap. This will capture them live, and then you can release them, or kill them later.

Throwing M80's down their holes will also work.

I feel kind of dumb, but...

What is a bandicoot?
-M

Gooday Matt the Rat,

A bandicoot is a cute little marsupial, about the size of a small cat, or a large rat. It has quite a pointed, conical type of nose with which it fossicks for whatever it is that bandicoots eat, an exercise that leave small conical-type holes in the lawn. It has a brown, striped sort of body and a longish tail. They hop about and make little grunts when disturbed, not unlike most of us I imagine. I don't think bandicoots represent the nuisance value of gophers or rabbits, or possums for that matter. Take care,

Walter

Fact or Fiction:
Someone told me that when a gopher dies and goes back down into the tunnel, the other gophers eat the remains. Is this true? What is the gestation period of a gopher? How many do they have to a litter?
Hoppa