Wally Smith’s tree fruit orchard had many pests. One that he had to reduce in numbers every year was the Pocket gopher, called that because of the cheek pouches in which they used to transport their food to caches in their burrows.
Wally’s first indication of the gopher’s presence was the mound of fresh dirt it pushed up from below. Wally knew then he had to get the trap out to deal with the invader.
He would get a shovel and with the trap, go to the mound, scoop out a shovelful of dirt and set the trap in its place.
He then had to make sure that he didn’t run over the trap with the tractor. He did this by pounding a pole into the ground. The trap, incidentally, was attached to the pole with a light chain. If a gopher got caught and a wandering dog came sniffing by, Wally wouldn’t lose the trap to the dog.
Having the pole in place would also alert anyone walking through the orchard that there was something to watch for.
I’m told that gophers will eat your vegetable garden. Wally didn’t have that problem because the pest was always out in the depths of the orchard, though their dirt mounds made for rough traveling through the orchard if the problem wasn’t dealt with.
Wally didn’t like using poisoned bait because he knew there were other animals that ate dead things they discovered such as dogs, skunks and some birds. Traps were the best way to insure that the animal you wanted dispatched was, and was done humanely.
Another problem was mice girdling the bark when the fruit trees were young. As the fruit trees grew the mice continued to chew them until their numbers were greatly reduced. By then, the beavers were becoming a nuisance too. The mice were relegated to the uncut areas of the creek banks because Wally kept the orchard grass short.
The mice did enjoy the feed storage shed in which Wally kept the bags of wheat, oyster shell and mash pellets for our flock of laying hens. We always kept a baited trap in the shed. The best bait was one grain of wheat jammed into the trigger hole of the trap.
Mice, by the way, don’t need a water source to survive. They get most of their water from the food the eat. They will even get moisture from cereal grains. Resourceful little critters aren’t they?
The Pocket gophers, mice and beavers were something Wally had some control over, better than muttering about the weather and the price of packing house fruit.