Okay...I finished my baking and my soup making, threw on my yard clothes, and checked the outdoor temperature. Dang nabbit, it's almost 60. Crud. That means I really had to go out and check the mound.
Here's my photo journal of the past hour.
First, a poor picture of the mound itself under plastic. Note that it is close to the neighbor's fence. They are a mess over there. 20 or 30 people there every day, in and out. They are the ones who came through a hole in the fence and did drugs in my yard before I fixed the fence and cleared the yard. In the background is my failed pea experiment. Well, not exactly failed yet. There are a half dozen blossoms on the plants that survived the freeze.
I moved what I could move by myself, and pulled back the plastic. It is flattened because of the extensive stomping I did yesterday to find out how it felt.
Then I did a lot of digging, and found this coming from under the fence. The edge of the mound on that far side was very soft. The extensive digging I did around the rest of the periphery did not reveal any tunneling, so I think this is the main one.
Now I am researching how to moiderize them.
Actually, I mentioned before that I killed a gopher in my broccoli the other day. That kill was 35 feet away from this mound, with plastic covering the space right up to the broccoli. I stuck a hose in the gopher hole and ran it top speed for five hours. No further holes.
I am not going to get a trap, because that would mean i would have to deal with a carcass, and I am not up for that. I am not going to use anything, obviously, that would pollute the ground. And of course, this may be moot as it or they may have alraedy drowned. Gophers work alone, so I don't think this is a colony. Might be babies getting read to go out on their own, though.
I found repellant, so that's a thought.
For now, I am going to adopt a wait and see attitude, leave the plastic off for a few days and see if there is any new activity, and go from there.
A side note, I had expected tons of slugs and snails under the plastic, but only found one. The best discovery was the enormous amount of vermicomposting I found ! I mean it is everywhere and a lot of it. That rocks !!!
Here's my photo journal of the past hour.
First, a poor picture of the mound itself under plastic. Note that it is close to the neighbor's fence. They are a mess over there. 20 or 30 people there every day, in and out. They are the ones who came through a hole in the fence and did drugs in my yard before I fixed the fence and cleared the yard. In the background is my failed pea experiment. Well, not exactly failed yet. There are a half dozen blossoms on the plants that survived the freeze.
I moved what I could move by myself, and pulled back the plastic. It is flattened because of the extensive stomping I did yesterday to find out how it felt.
Then I did a lot of digging, and found this coming from under the fence. The edge of the mound on that far side was very soft. The extensive digging I did around the rest of the periphery did not reveal any tunneling, so I think this is the main one.
Now I am researching how to moiderize them.
Actually, I mentioned before that I killed a gopher in my broccoli the other day. That kill was 35 feet away from this mound, with plastic covering the space right up to the broccoli. I stuck a hose in the gopher hole and ran it top speed for five hours. No further holes.
I am not going to get a trap, because that would mean i would have to deal with a carcass, and I am not up for that. I am not going to use anything, obviously, that would pollute the ground. And of course, this may be moot as it or they may have alraedy drowned. Gophers work alone, so I don't think this is a colony. Might be babies getting read to go out on their own, though.
I found repellant, so that's a thought.
For now, I am going to adopt a wait and see attitude, leave the plastic off for a few days and see if there is any new activity, and go from there.
A side note, I had expected tons of slugs and snails under the plastic, but only found one. The best discovery was the enormous amount of vermicomposting I found ! I mean it is everywhere and a lot of it. That rocks !!!
