We’ve done this at least once before, but it does bear revisiting. What’s your opinion? Mine, you ask? They are evil little marauders, scavengers of chicken food, and eaters of all good plants. Grrrr. I hate them. And. They’re ugly.

Often, when mom and I talk during the week, we discuss the plants we’ve lost and the damage that the evil critters do. We loose so many plants every year to these guys. Mom’s solution lately has been these little Sonic Spikes. She says they’ve done a great job of keeping critters out of the garden. So – for Christmas, she gifted one to the farm. Sue put it out Christmas day! Doesn’t seem to bother the squirrels any, but we haven’t seen any gopher activity in the area since. Now all that remains to do is buy about 100 of them and set them out all over the property. Evil little critters. I think we will slowly buy more of them. Today, I had to replace emitters on the orchard drip system because the gophers chewed them off! Evil little critters. I mean – I know that we haven’t had a great deal rain or snow or any other of our usual precipitation, but geez evil critters! Can’t they tell that if there’s no water coming out of them, they won’t get anything else if the chew off the little spigots? Evil, I say.

I suppose that’s my big rant. Late last year, I actually purchased some of the old fashioned gopher traps, but I can’t figure out how to make them work. I know that mom used to catch a ton of gophers with them; however, I am a little squeamish about killing them. I’m the same way with the mice. If the chickens get them, fine. If they drown their own selves, fine. I have a difficult time with trapping them. Oh yes! the chickens will, on occasion, get a gopher. Especially the barred rocks or the cuckoo morans. We try to encourage that behavior, but chickens aren’t very trainable in that regard. I suppose we could not feed them. Do you suppose gophers and mice are considered organic? Hmm. I guess we’ll have to research that and report back. Until then, as always~
Thanks for reading!