Gopher

“ The gopher sits bolt upright on the edge of a hole, vanishing downward like a shot when he thinks audacity has reached fool-hardiness. Twenty yards ahead, beside the trail, a fountain of earth spouts up where a big striped badger is digging himself a home. He turns and stares at us, motionless, till we also stop, when he too disappears. Now and then a snake slips across the trail, a greenish-yellow innocent. ”

“ Gopher, the first Gopher, who wasn't old then, was one of the little people whom Old Mother Nature turned loose in the Great World which was just in its beginning and told to make the best of life as they found it. ”

“ The gopher is the turtle of the southern pine countries. It is a large, strong animal, with a shell fifteen inches long. These gopher turtles live in troops, a number of families digging their dens or burrows near together. The entrance to the den is about four feet long and expands into a spacious room. In each burrow lives a single pair of gophers. Gophers’ eggs are as large as pigeons’ eggs, and the eggs and flesh are prized by the negroes as food. By day gophers stay at home, by night they wander out and devour yams, melons, corn, and other garden produce. ”

“ The gopher abounds chiefly in the forests, but occasionally visits the open plains, where it does great damage, especially to the potato crops, on which it feeds. It is a nocturnal animal, remaining concealed by day in its deep burrow, and coming forth at night to feed. The eggs, five in number, almost round and 11/2 in. in diameter, are laid in a separate cavity near the entrance. The flesh of the gopher or mungofa, as it is also called, is considered excellent eating.
The name “gopher” is more commonly applied to certain small rodent mammals, particularly the pocket-gopher. ”

“ And eventually one of the beasts, attracted by all the flickering and flashing and frantic scrabbling visible through the doorway, abandoned the fun of the fight and leaped, like a ten-ton gopher, through the opening.
The others followed, naturally. They always chased and tore apart the first one to cut and run.
Gop had just set Helen Gorman on the ground, and Johnny Gorman, seeing her apparently materialize from thin air and float downward, had just started to stagger toward her, when the ten-ton gopher began to vivisect one of Pud's tails. ”

“ Then suddenly out popped a half-grown gopher, four and a half or five inches long, and, without stopping a single moment to choose a way of escape, ran screaming through the stubble straight away from its home, quickly followed by another and another, until some half-dozen were driven out, all of them crying and running in different directions as if at this dreadful time home, sweet home, was the most dangerous and least desirable of any place in the wide world. ”

“ Lastly the gopher furnishes an important food source for certain fur-bearing mammals and eases the predator pressure on game species.
The subspecies of pocket gopher occupying the Puget Sound area are highly restricted in their habitat preference; they occur only on the grassy prairies of the glacial outwash aprons. They do not occur in woods, brush or even small openings on the borders of the prairies. The alpine forms occupy the mountain meadows and are slightly less selective in their habits. ”

“ The Prairie Gopher.—Among the burrowing species belonging to the squirrel family, the prairie gopher (Spermophilus Richardsoni) holds prominent rank. Though one of the most abundant animals in our country, infesting hundreds of thousands of square miles of territory, almost to the exclusion of other mammalian forms, the prairie gopher has but lately received the honor of an adequate description. This service has been rendered by Dr. Elliott Coues in the pages of the American Naturalist. ”

“ It names the town Gopher Prairie—because the Middle West is prairie land and the gopher-rats or marmots live there in myriads in their little burrows. The novelist seems to suggest that the people themselves are a species of gopher, a little people, limited of view, good-natured, of the earth earthy, but always bobbing-up. ”

“ "I wonder if you can understand the 'fun' of making a beautiful thing, the pride and satisfaction of it, and the holiness!"
The company glanced doubtfully at one another. In Gopher Prairie it is not good form to be holy except at a church, between ten-thirty and twelve on Sunday. ”

“ Their food consists of vegetable matter such as roots, bulbs, tubers and surface foliage and green vegetation.
The pocket gopher is rather small in size, about eight inches long, including a tail of a little over two inches, and is light brown in color. The tail is only sparsely haired and the front feet are large and built for digging. The Uinta ground squirrel or picket-pin is frequently referred to by some people as a gopher, but it should not be confused with the true gopher and is seldom seen above the ground. ”

“ He lives down in the ground, and can work in the dark as well as in the light; and he likes roots just as well as he likes the stems above ground; so as long as he stays in his cellar houses, he is hard to reach. [Pg 85]
The gopher is a pretty little creature, with a striped back,—almost as pretty as a chipmonk. It seems a great pity to have to kill them all off; but there is no help for it; fruit-trees and gophers cannot live in the same place. ”

“ The gopher is a little animal which lives in the ground. It digs a hole about two feet deep, and it eats corn and other grain. Gophers destroy so many crops that the farmers do not like them, and they pay boys for killing them. I earned forty-eight cents last year killing gophers. I would take a club and a pail of water, and go to their holes. When I poured in some water, they would run out, and I would kill them with the club.
Arthur N. T.
The gopher, or Canada pouched rat, is a very remarkable burrower, as it will dig under-ground passages extending in lateral galleries in all directions. ”

“ It is worth while to note in this connection that, although the habits of the gopher have varied little with their peculiar habit of life, they have invented, as before noted, the very sufficient and ingenious custom by which they discharge the surplus earth from their burrows at the least expenditure of force and time. ”

“ Near Moses Lake, Grant County, an adult male weasel was caught in a gopher trap, but no gophers were taken. At Shelton, Mason County, 50 gopher traps were set. At daylight the following morning the first trap visited was found to be pulled into the burrow. When a gentle tug was given the wire fastening the trap, a decisive jerk at the other end showed that the catch was alive. If trapped gophers that pull the traps back into their burrows are pulled out by main strength, their skins are often torn and damaged. ”

“ So Elk became quieted and Gopher went back into the ground, and from the centre dug holes in four directions to the edge of the plain. Nayé̆nayĕzganĭ then entered one from the east, and coming to the centre looked up and saw Elk's heart beating. Drawing his flint-pointed arrow to the head, he shot the monster through the heart, then quickly dropped down into Gopher's burrow beneath four stones which, one below the other, stopped the vertical channel. But first he made with his [pg 066] fire-stick a dense white smoke at the end of the burrow that ran to the east. ”

“ Worse than the scale-bug, in that he works out of sight underground, is the gopher. He has gnawed every root of a tree bare before a tooth-mark on the trunk suggests his presence, and then it is too late to save the tree. ”

“ The habit of burrowing at different levels probably was one factor which permitted the two kinds of pocket gophers to live in the same area. The average weight of these gophers was 86 grams in males and 74 grams in females, or only an eighth as much as in Cratogeomys.
Cratogeomys gymnurus imparilis (Goldman)
Plains Pocket Gopher; Spanish, Tuza Llanera; Tarascan, Cúmu (Cŏmŏ)
Platygeomys gymnurus imparilis, Goldman, Jour. ”

“ In uncultivated land the gopher is a distinct asset unless the land is near enough to cultivated land to serve as a reservoir of pests. In the mountains and on the desert the gopher cultivates and keeps the soil soft and stimulates the growth of water-retaining vegetation, thus preventing rapid run-off and erosion and keeping the flow of springs and streams constant. Boulders, logs, and other obstructions are undermined and, as a result of gopher activity, in time sink under the surface of the ground. ”

“ However, we all arrived at the bottom, without any mishap, and were soon busy fixing our camp for the night. After supper, Jimmy amused himself by catching a gopher, with a noose of string which he placed outside its hole, and then when it put its head out, he drew the string and the gopher was caught. After we had kept it a little while I let it go, and it ran down its hole, dragging the whole length of string with it, and then there was a great commotion in gopher-land—such squeaking, while I suppose he was telling his adventures to his family. ”

“ Charley reined in his horse before four large holes and pointed at them with his riding-whip. "Gopher in that one," he declared without hesitation. "Mr. Gopher is away from the next one, out getting his dinner likely; a coon lives in the next, but he is away from home. Rattlesnake, and a big one, lives in the fourth, but he is also away from home, I am glad to say." ”

“ They 'd eat a gum boot fust!"
"Tell you what we'll do," growled the Gopher, "reform him."
"Reform hell!" said the sailor to himself.
"Come, let's do a little missionary business, and begin at home," urged the Gopher. "Get the Judge to reprimand him. Have him talk to him an hour, then let the Parson speak to him another hour. If he lives that through he will be an honest man, or if not honest he will at least be harmless."
Now they had no preacher in the Forks, not even the semblance of one yet, neither had they a lawyer or doctor, but this Parson was a power in the camp. ”

“ Tskel said to Gopher: “Hereafter you will be of no account. You will dig in the ground and people will make fun of you.”
If Tskel hadn’t killed Gopher, there would be no one living in the world now.
In the hole where Gopher was it is always hot, no matter how cold it is outside. Gopher’s body, turned to stone, is still in the hole.
After Tskel killed Gopher, he and Tcûskai went home, but Tskel didn’t want to stay there. He thought about his cousin, Kaiutois. One day he said to Skóŭks: “I am going to see my cousin,” and he sent Tcûskai to ask Gäk if he would go with them. ”

“ A very slight examination of the sandy woodlands which are principally occupied by this creature will, however, convince the observer that the gopher, though selective processes have not helped him in his arduous task, is by dint of sheer strength and admirable persistency capable of doing work of singular magnitude. ”

“ Earth excavated during the winter months is firmly packed in tunnels which the gopher makes on the surface of the ground beneath the snow. These winding ridges of earth are revealed by the melting snow as further evidences of pocket gopher activity. ”

“ The isolation of soils with textures suitable to this animal has resulted in the isolation of gopher populations. The distribution is similar to that of species occurring on islands. In this instance, however, the populations of gophers are separated by soils of heavy texture which render burrowing difficult or impossible for gophers. ”

“ A Florida gopher is very different from those we read about as living out West. In shape and size he is nearly like a common fresh-water turtle, with this difference; he lives on land. The gopher has a very hard shell covering his entire body except the head and feet. His front feet are nearly like a turtle's, with four or five claws, but very hard. They must of necessity be hard, for this animal burrows very deep in this hard, clay ground. His hind feet are round, with a flat bottom, four to five claws on each, evidently made for pushing when walking or burrowing. ”

“ When one gopher intrudes into the tunnel of another the owner at once fiercely attacks it. In some places I have seen Mexicans take advantage of this characteristic pugnacity by fastening the end of a long string about the body of a captured gopher and then turning it into an occupied tunnel, through a recently made opening. The owner, scenting the intruder, would immediately attack him, the combatants locking their great incisors in a bulldog grip. ”

“ He can escape from them too readily. There is another occasional occupant of the hollow palmetto, however, for whom br’er rabbit has much horror, and I confess to similar feelings when I chance upon him suddenly. That is the gopher snake. Not that I have any real excuse for this feeling, for the gopher snake is not only perfectly harmless to all creatures except those that he swallows whole, but he is one of the handsomest snakes known. His main color is an intense indigo blue, so deep that it is a blue black, whence another common name, the indigo snake. ”

“ When alarmed he draws his head and feet into his shell and remains quiet. He is a very peaceful animal. I have never known one to bite anybody nor anything else. The gopher lives in the ground, burrowing a molelike passage several hundred feet long. There is no use trying to dig for one. ”

“ They drag leaves and any manageable portion of plants into their burrows, and much of the material so taken down into the ground decays and enriches the ground to a depth of several inches. The pocket gopher has done much to furnish a surface layer of loose, mellow, easily cultivated and highly productive soil. Like the earth worm, the gopher for century after century has been bringing up to the surface fine material, to the amount of several tons annually to the acre, avoiding necessarily the pebbles, cobbles and coarser constituents. ”