Hey Weeper, did you manage to get rid of your pocket gopher?

BTW For anyone interested, I was watching The Nature of Things, and the only place in Canada that you can find Prairie Dogs anymore is in Grasslands National Park in Saskatchewan. Who knew?

NAF - I got that pocket gopher the first night I put the traps out! The metal crazy-contraption lookin' traps (sort of a tricked out mouse trap with pincers) seem to work the best for me. He was a big ugly sucker which I proceeded to happily take pictures of to send to my family.

Who knew I could be so bloodthristy? :0

I still have lots in my yard though. If anyone else is using traps, make sure you stake the trap with WIRE, not twine. I lost 1 trap because a gopher evidently got his leg caught or something, chewed through my twine tether, and dragged the trap away. Argh. Then he proceeded to pack the hole up extra tight with dirt. I showed him though. I caught him the next night with another trap, though unfortunately he had managed to get the other trap off, so it is gone for good. I've leared my lesson - wire everything to a stake!

97% of the time, the traps have been working for me.

I had heard that about Prairie Dogs. I've seen them in a zoo before I think. They are really cute!!

Weeper, you're hilarious.

I think somewhere in a post you said you had no children as you were still just a baby yourself, but I doubt your family was as happy about "big ugly sucker" pictures as you were. Baby pictures are generally something better accepted by family, LOL !

Are your traps actually called gopher traps? I'd like to get one just in case. Hopefully they're not too expensive because I'd probably just pitch the whole thing. Taking a dead rodent out of a trap would send me over the edge I'm sure !

Yeah, I'm married, but I'm only 23, and I still feel pretty immature most days. ;) Haha, yeah my family was kind of grossed out, but we're all farm people, so dead rodents are a part of life, LOL.

I think the traps are called gopher traps. They cost me 7.99 each. You don't have to touch the rodent when you release it...I dunno NAF, if you had a rodent ruining your garden, you might suprise yourself with how you would laugh maliciously as you emptied the trap!!

23? Yes, you're still a baby. I remember 23.........

Come to think of it, I used to think the "Easter Bunny" around here was cute until he chewed the heck out of my rose bushes. Now I'd like to take that "wabbit" and blast him to smithereens. A dead rodent like a gopher though, I'd have to run away and get somebody else to get rid of it.

Thanks for the info on the trap.

Wow, I should have read this before making a new thread.

I have a question for weeper... can we get those traps in Calgary? We definitely need some of them. We have a big Richardson's but it never worked... probably too big!

I'm guessing that maybe the traps that Weeper uses aren't legal to use in a city ??

I'd try a store like Peavy Mart. They're the type of place that has things that nobody else sells anymore. A leg hold trap will work, but keep in mind that if you have a pet or your neighbours do, you won't want to use one. Calgary may have bylaws that prevents their use (?)

Hopefully Weeper will read this and let you know what she's got.

Thanks nutsaboutflowers! I looked up Peavy Mart but the closest store is in High River. Rona and Home Depot only carry mouse traps but nothing else so you could be right about the bylaws in the city. We don't have pets and our neighbor's dog doesn't come to our yard. We used to have a cat visiting our yard years ago but we haven't seen it for over 10 years so the feline probably is gone for good.

I saw it in a different gopher thread and someone mentioned the name of Macabee traps. I found them on Amazon.com but as usual they don't ship to Canada.

Do you have a Home Hardware? Maybe they have something?

There must be some type of farm supply or feed store that would carry traps, or at least know where you could get one. If you ask to speak to someone "older" there's a chance they either grew up on a farm, or know someone who did, and know exactly what you're looking for. A younger person from the city likely won't have a clue =:)

Maybe Weeper will be "stopping by" here soon.

Havahart traps are readily available in Calgary at Rona and Canadian Tire.

Also, the City will provide you traps (or, at least they used to, so you might want to check). You cannot use leg traps in the City. But you can use snares.

I did have a serious hare problem at the old house. I stopped counting after I trapped twenty.

Nutsaboutflowers, we don't have a home hardware in Calgary but if I become desperate I will go to Cochrane. I went on Home hardware website and it showed some of their locations had the small Victor gopher traps. Not sure how effective they are but I probably will call them to check availability first.

Shazam, you mean the City of Calgary provides traps for gophers? I certainly should look into that. We have something similar to the Harvahart (Richardson's) and a metal case mouse trap. The metal mouse trap only catches small mice while the Richardson's is way too big, even though we did trap a squirrel, the gopher never got near it. My goodness, trapping bunnies! We used to have a lot of them but for some reason I only see the a couple of them in rare occasions.

althetrainer - sorry I'm late! I got my traps in a store called "Early's", they have lots of gardening supplies, they also sell stuff like chicken feed, bird seed, various rodent poisons, as well as traps. It might be just a Saskatoon store, I'm not sure.

Unfortunately lately I haven't been able to find any of the less expensive wire traps with the pincers that worked really well. So now I have a "Black box" trap and a "Black hole" trap...both of them have caught multiple pocket gophers, so they work well also. The problem is you have to big a much larger hole so that the traps can butt up against the holes without twisting or lifting. I think I have seen these traps in Home Hardware and Peavey Mart for sure. Sometimes different locations will have different selections. I don't see why these traps wouldn't be legal in the city, because they are underground, so it isn't like you are at risk of catching anything else.
Anyway, hope you can get rid of the gopher soon...these guys are destructive! On the positive side, it is likely you only have 1.

Ah thanks weeper! Seems like no one in Calgary carries any of these traps. There is a Home Hardware in Cochrance, 1/2 hour away from Calgary seems to have traps in this nature. According to Home Hardware website they have three different kinds: The metal wire trap, the black box trap, and something called reusable rodent trap. The black box trap is $14 while the other two are both $10. Which one would you recommend? I will give them a call to see if they actually have them in stock.

Here is a link that might be useful: Traps in Home Hardware

Check Canadian Tire, I'm sure I saw the black gopher trap there, although they may be out of stock now.

althetrainer - the wire trap is the one that I liked so much because you don't need to dig up much grass to position it. However, I found that the wire traps wear out much faster than the black box does. After a number of kills, the wire trap can become distorted and need to be tossed. So as far as value for your money, the black box is probably best.
Oh, one more thing you should know: You should buy more than one trap...the best, sometimes the only, way to catch them is to dig up one tunnel system and put a trap down each hole that intersects there. So I usually use 2 or even 3 traps at once..that way no matter what direction or down what tunnel the gopher comes from, you'll get him. Otherwise, they sometimes pack the trap full of dirt instead of it catching them!

Thanks!

Weeper, I do plan on buying a few of them. Do we have to dig deep inside the tunnel for the trap placement? One of the hole is wedged between the fence and some bricks; it's practically impossible to dig under there. Also some of the holes are outside our fence, in the back lane. Is it legal for us to set traps outside our properties?

By the way, we have just discovered, this afternoon, 5 more holes in our front lawn! These holes look a bit different than those in the backyard. These holes are very solid, look like someone pushed a round pipe into the ground, and there's no mound or dirt around it. Unlike the holes in the backyard that spread all the way outside our fence, these five holes are all found within a 4' x 4' area.

This gopher problem seems to be getting bigger and bigger and so is my head! :-(

The pocket gopher holes should look like a circular or fan shaped soft pile of dirt with a slight indentation on one end(you can sometimes make out the faint outline of a hole that has been packed with dirt...this will usually sink somewhat because it is only a plug, and then the hole beneath it) I think that pocket gophers ALWAYS plug their holes, so there should be no open hole visible. If there is, I don't think it is a pocket gopher.

If you have some of each: some open holes, and some like I have described, it is likely that you have a ground squirrel of some sort(13-lined, Richardson or Franklin) PLUS a pocket gopher. If the holes are only an inch or 1 1/2 inch across, it may be voles) I have never caught a ground squirrel with a pocket gopher trap...so I'm not sure if they work for them. Usually I shoot them(I know, not an option in the city!) or poison them. You may need to ask someone in "the know" in the city as to what is legal in the city to get rid of ground squirrels..I live on a farm, so I have no clue. Anyway, they have very different habits, so I'm not sure a trap built for a pocket gopher would work for a ground squirrel.

As for setting the pocket gopher traps:
Stand with the dirt fanning away from you, the hole indentation should be right in front of you. With some sort of metal rod(I use rebar..maybe a broom stick would work?) probe the ground about a foot or so from where the hole is, towards you, away from the "fan". You should feel a sudden drop when you hit a tunnel. Get a shovel and dig up the tunnel(it'll probably be 6-8 inches down) Clean out the tunnel well so you can find any intersections with other tunnels..there may or may not be any, but you'll need minimum 2 traps. Place the set traps butting right up against the holes, and carefully place dirt around the edges of the traps so that it seems like a continuation of the tunnel. You can leave the rest of the dug hole uncovered. If you are using a wire trap, set it right into the hole, and then position some dirt over the opening (this should prevent the gopher from wanting to push dirt ahead of itself - into your trap - to plug the hole). THIS PART IS IMPORTANT - make sure you tie a piece of wire or something that the gopher cannot chew through onto your trap and then tie it to the rod you were probing with and put that rod firmly into the ground so that your trap is tethered. Otherwise you may lose it. Leave it alone for half a day(overnight is best because they are active at night) and check it - you should have a gopher in one of your traps, because they check their tunnels incessantly. If you don't, you can leave it for another 6 hours, or try repositioning the traps.

Once you've got the bugger, replace the dirt and you should be done with him! They are supposed to be solitary, so there should only be one pocket gopher per tunnel system. Happy hunting!

No poison allowed in the city.

Thanks weeper for the details. Here are a few pictures of the new holes that we've discovered in our front lawn. Since the lawn is covered with sods there's no dirt around the openeings. The holes are all between 1" and 1-1/2" across and they're very close to each other. I am not sure if these are gopher holes but if these guys are digging so many holes they must be doing something underneath!

I tried to take pictures of the holes in the backyard but the rain last night has packed down the dirt and it was too bright. In the backyard there's one hole we can dig, right next to our apple tree (scary). The second hole we can see in our yard is wedged between the base of our fence and some stones. The rest of them are outside our yard so we can't really go and dig holes outside our properties.

Could be voles, by the look of the holes...voles often have clusters of holes, like that. However, I have had a young group of 13 lined ground squirrls with holes nearly as small as vole-holes in clusters like that also. Maybe you can catch either one the same way?(whatever way that may be) Or else try to get a glimpse of it. And look for "runways"...voles often travel the exact same path over and over and make little pathways for themselves. Ground squirrels are less likely to do this.

Well, since you can't blast them with a .22 like Weeper could, and you don't want to and can't use poison (who wants to find dead poisoned rodents everywhere), then if I were you, I'd declare war. That's just too many holes.

I'd get Victor mouse traps to start with. They're the best. You can get them at Canadian Tire. If you have voles, they apparently like oatmeal, so to attract whatever it may be, I'd put on half a peanut with some oatmeal stuck to it with peanut butter, and set the traps in your plants. See what you get by morning. I'll bet it's going to be something. Yuck!

Voles?! I have never seen a real vole but there's a first time for everything! Do I have to dig deep to set the traps? If I have to dig deep to cover all these holes I will have to take out a large part of our lawn. What a shame!

We have some Victor traps for mice but they are pretty small. How big are voles? Do I have to secure the traps so the rodents won't run away with them? This is what we have:

We have peanut butter and oatmeal so we have plenty of baits. Do I set them out at night? We have lots of bunnies and corvids around and I certainly don't want to trap them.

My understanding of trapping voles is that you set the trap perpindicular(I think I may have butchered that word!) to a runway if you can find one, so that they will have the trap right in their path as they travel along. The victor mouse traps will be used on the SURFACE. The only one you need to dig anything for will be the pocket gopher traps.

If you can't find any runways, I would just put the baited trap in the middle of the hole-y area, and see if you catch anything. Yes, put the trap out at night, voles are nocturnal I believe.

Thank you very much weeper! I will check to see how many traps we have. In fact, I went on Youtube and saw someone used a different type of traps and it seemed pretty straight forward. Definitely will give these a try. I will post pictures here if there's any success!

We don't see any runways yet but definitely plenty of holes. Nutsaboutflowers is right, this is war! One more obstacle because we can start. I know our 10-year-old will be very upset because he is very sensitive about things like this. :-( Need to prepare him just in case he happens to witness the action.

I had voles last year, I caught them using standard mouse traps. Used peanut butter as the bait. Also caught a few mice, but I think they were interlopers.

From the looks of the holes you don't have pocket gophers. Voles or mice is more likely.

Pocket gophers leave mounds of dirt on the surface. This is dirt excavated from the tunnels.

My prefered bait for mice or voles is a peanut butter and bacon fat mix. Everybody loves bacon. I would also drill a small hole in the corner of the trap. Attach a string and stake it so that the trap can't be dragged away.

Yea... I have done some more online search and the culprits look more and more like voles. Unfortunately for us it has been raining constantly so we can't do anything until the rain stops.

I've been watching this thread from the beginning and I would tend to agree with Bluegoat. We lived in Calgary up to 2004 just outside of town. We had lots of voles ( meadow mice) with the exact same holes and habits. The grounds keeper used poison down the holes much to my shock, horror, and protest. I had and still have dogs and grandchildren! I used mouse traps under the plants and close to the house and holes. I don't think I baited them at all. I did catch some but it was pretty much a loosing battle out there. I also didn't have birds around all the time like I do here. Might sound silly but I tried something this year that I would do again and again. I put food screens from the dollar store over my ant hills after I applied poison. Maybe you could try that over the traps with a small hole cut in the side of the screen so the other citters won't be tempted. :) Worth a try?

Ginny

PS As Bluegoat mentioned, stake the trap. Voles are big mice. :)

Yeah, voles are supposed to multiply faster than rabbits! if you just noticed the holes though, maybe you can catch them all before they multiply, if poison can't be used in the city.

I did a search. These look more like rats than mice. Even our son didn't think it was bad to kill them because they looked so disgusting!

Just big mice. We grow everything bigger in Alberta. :)

Ginny

LOL Ginny! I thought it was Texas where everything was bigger?!

Well, Alberta is Canada's Texas. In my yard, the mosquitoes use the birdhouses and we decorate the thistles at Christmas! :)......And the mice wear horse shoes!

Ginny

LOLOL I just whacked down a bush of thistles that was at least 2.5' tall. No matter how much I pull, dig, & cut, they always come back in the spring. I might as well save them for Christmas. What a great idea!

The mice in the photo are house mice. Voles have very short ears and tail, and are a rather plump mouse. They are country mice and seldome come around gardens and lawns.

The range of the Northern Pocket Gopher in Canada extends into B.C. at least into the east Kootenay valley and I would be surpried if it doesn't occur in the Okanogan, Similkameen (sp?) North Thompon and even north onto the Caribou Plateau.

They usually dig a lateral from their main tunnel to push the dirt out of. If this lateral is too short or plugged all the way to the main tunnel, the main tunnel has to be opened up and a trap set in each direction or you are flipping a coin on which direction the rodent is if you set a single trap.

The reason an pan type leg-hold trap does not work is they almost always are pushing a load of dirt in front of them to plug the opened hole and the dirt triggers the trap and does not get them.

If you catch one, marvel at its small eyes, and its tremendously developed digging forelegs and claws, but more than that, slide your finger inside its buchal pouches. These are fur lined chambers outside of its mouth on each side. The inner wall of the buckal cavity is equivalent to our cheek. As they dig they stuff bedding material and food that they store for the winter in these pouches, to carry to the appropriate rooms in their suite.

I once trapped them out of an 80 acre alfalfa field. They are really a pest in alfalfa fields, loving to feed on the rootes and nodules of the plants, and their mounds create havock with the knives on hay cuttling machines.

They are a common item in the diets of Great Horned Owls. The young must leave their mother's burrow to relocate at some time during the year and the males must also travel overland when the right time of year for him to start 'cruising' occurs, and it seems they must prefer to do this at night.

They do not flourish in solid stands of grass. They prefer the roots of broad-leafed palnts. In a garden they will tunnel along a row of potatoes and sample a tater or two at each hill. However the potatoes soon heal by growing a new skin over the munched on area. Ask me how I know! He never made it to the carrots, poor fellow.

There are a number of traps on the market, but the Macabee is by far the best. However I have had trouble finding outlets for it in Canada. Would the person that did buy them in Canada kindly tell me who the dealer you got them from is?

I used to have six but neighbours like to borrow them and then not return them, and I had a dog once that was very adept at digging them out after they were full and burrying the trap and gopher somewhere unbeknownst to me. Now I have one of these miners in my lawn and though it does not eat grass roots, preferring dandilion roots, I object to the mounds. I think I might be able to drownd him out but he might just put up an earthen dam and protect himself that way. Macabee is the best way.
I am sure it would leave if I used a herbicide on the dandelions but then it would likely find my vegetable garden. It has got to go to its happy root digging heaven.

When we could get strychnine, a little piece of carrot in the run was very effective and because of the fact they live in their own exclusive executive suite, the poison was perfectly exclusive too. The warfarin based poisons they sell now are not very effective at all.

No I have not outlived seventeen husbands - that rumour is a lie. It was only 16 and the last one has been very healthy since they took strichnine off the market. Apple seeds ground and mixed in his coffee has not worked either. I think the smart aleck has built up an arsenic resistance.

This is a very informative read, Gennie!
So when you have a new, [relocated] rodent your'e trying to catch, is it then this the only one around? I was wondering often why isn't there another one. Have several hills again and need trapping, County Leduc gives you a dollar or so for a tail, last year anyway, but not sure anymore where I keep these tails LOL.

Very informative indeed! Thank you Gennie for taking time to write this up. You're correct about these being house mice. I called 311 Monday morning and of course it was a holiday for most. But our city is very vigilant in keeping rats out of our province so I actually got a call back from animal control the same morning. I sent him the picture and he called me an hour later and said those were definitely not the most dreadful Norway rats. But he thought they were some sort of rats - Kangaroo rats - yet the head was too long, he said. In order to investigate further he forwarded my picture to one of his experts. Took only a couple of hours for the expert to get back to us and the verdict was "house mice".

I had never seen a rat before and the mice that I'd seen were much smaller and they looked so cute that I almost felt guilty for killing them. But the sight of these two gave me the creeps and made my hair stand on end. I wonder how Mickey feel about having these distant relatives? LOL

We bought some old fashion Victor cheapo traps as well as those easy set plastic type.

The old fashion ones actually worked very well; set 7 traps up and caught two of them in two separate traps. We put the plastic ones in the backyard but for some reason they were never triggered. The critter that gnawed off my squash plant didn't even bother to touch the peanut butter bait. Regarding the MaCabee traps I have too searched high and low but found zero in Canada. There's one company in the US that will ship the traps but I am not sure sure how these will clear customs and very likely there will be customs and other fees involved.

Geenie, you seem to have a lot of experience dealing with rodents and I hope you can help me because right now I have more questions than answers.

We know we are dealing with mice in the front lawn and some unknown residents in our backyard. The animal control guy told me there must be more mice in the burrows because they should have babies by now. We trapped the two mice Friday night/Saturday morning but since we haven't seen any activities in our front lawn, no dead body, untouched baits, and un-triggered traps etc. My husband is sure that we've got all of them, but I am very skeptical and believe it's too soon to bring out the champagne. Is it possible that there were only two of them? There are 7 holes in the front lawn and these two were trapped next to the same hole (left and right). How much longer should we wait before we can be sure that we've got all of them? Do we plug the holes once we decided they're all gone? I consider flooding them out but someone here said flooding was not very effective.

Now, the backyard... there are only two holes in the backyard and one looks pretty much like those in the front. My husband said the hole was made by a pocket gopher a few years ago. We had hired a guy to deal with it but we were never sure if the problem was taken care of. Because once the weather turned cold and our vegetations died out there's no obvious gopher activity until the next spring. We decided to stop growing anything in our garden - was pointless anyway - except some herbs and our apple tree. We were hoping starvation would drive the rodent out of our yard for good.

This late spring I decided to plant some squash plants and to my horror, the holes were back, only this time they look a bit different than before, no fresh dirt piled up at the opening. Look at this:

{{gwi:108572}}

This is the only visible hole that we found near our squash plants. My husband sealed off the other one next to the fence. There are more outside our fence, in the back lane, like these:

{{gwi:108576}}

What do you think of these? Are they made by mice or gophers? I have tried to trap them inside our yard to no avail. Whatever these are, they are eating my squash plants alive. One plant died completely yesterday because it was severed from its root. The critter ate the root from above ground then left the plant to die .

The animal control guy suggested lots of traps and poison baits. I went to Rona to get a large bag of Wilsarin (claimed to be more effective than Warfarin) and put them out in both the front and backyards last night. Checked this morning; the baits were disturbed but not eaten! I am not sure what displaced the baits but certainly no one had taken a bite!

My questions are:

1) Is it possible that our backyard dwellers are not the same as our front lawn residents?

2) Is there any chance that we've gotten them all? (Wishful thinking but I will ask anyway)

3) How long do we continue to trap and put out baits?

4) Do we plug the holes and is there a proper way of doing it?

Anyway suggestions will be greatly appreciated!

Another day another plant lost. Woke up this morning found both traps and poison untouched. A horrifying sight of another plant got partially eaten by the critter. This time it was not the root but a healthy vine to a nice baseball sized fruit that got destroyed.

I dug down about 8" but there was no obvious holes. The only way I knew the darn thing was there because I dug up squash leaves. The rodent has already plugged up the whole tunnel... I dug from the first plant (uprooted two days ago) to where the second spot, the dirt was lose but again no tunnel. I traced the soft spot and it continued deep into my squash patch. No way I could dig out the tunnel without hurting my plant.

I only have six plants and in 3 days the darn thing killed two of them. What can I do? Do I just sit here to watch the rest of them die? Judging by the rate it probably won't take long for it to kill everything. I am feeling so helpless and depressed! Dug up loose dirt from the 1st lost plant to the second

This baseball sized fruit will not survive because there's no new root developed anywhere along the vine.

Tracing the soft spot and it goes deep into the patch. I couldn't dig any further without damaging the plants so I had to stop.

This looks like vole damage to me. Maybe you have voles and house mice. Not uncommon. BTW, apparently, voles love hostas. They also love root vegies. My ex has had problems with voles for years. I'll have to ask him what he has tried. He lives on an acreage.

Ginny

This is ironic because we thought we had voles in the front lawn where we set traps. It turned out those were house mice. Their burrows were obvious with holes clustered within a 4' X 4' area. We caught two of them (I have posted a picture of them a few days ago) and their activities had stopped all together.

We had hired an exterminator three years ago to deal with a separate problem in the backyard and the guy said it was a pocket gopher. He tried everything under the sun for two years but we just couldn't get rid of it. The third year we finally decided not to grow anything and I thought hunger had driven the darn thing away.

This late spring I planted these plants and they were doing very well until this week. My first plant died two days ago and one is about to die due to what happened last night.

Whatever we're dealing with back here is definitely killing our plants. If it continues to eat a plant every night all my squash plants will be dead before the weekend. I have five baseball sized fruits and one of them is dying on its chewed off vine. I am afraid the rest of them will suffer from the same fate unless I can put a stop to this.

It is not uncommon to have house mice, deer mice, or otherwise in any area of the city or country at any time of the year so catching 2 mice is easy. I feed the birds all year and have mice around my house and garage all year. If they can get in the house they will, especially to get at the bird feed which is kept in the front porch in sealed containers. Also, they will come in when the weather starts to get cooler, looking for a place to winter over. I had a stray cat who used to leave me "presents" of mmice every morning under an outdoor kennel. If I put traps out tonight, I would probably find them full in the morning.

That said, voles, on the other hand, are not AS common as mice in the city, but that depends where in the city you live. It is common in many of the newer areas of the city for voles to live, especially if there are gardens to raid! Some types of voles tend to like it lush vs dry. Their most common pedators are birds of prey and coyotes, foxes which are not, fortunately, city dwellers. If you know someone who will let you borrow their Jack Russell for a few days, they will probably get your vermin. Of course, you will have much bigger holes to contend with! :)

Ginny

Here's a couple of links that are informative.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vole

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meadow_Vole

Thanks for the links. I have done some research when we thought we had voles in our front lawn. You know what is funny? Our front lawn looks more like vole city than our backyard. In the front lawn we got holes, runways, and the whole 9 yards, but they turned out to be house mice. On the other hand, our garden in the back looks perfect, no hole, no tunnel, no tracks but our plants are being killed by some unknown critters.

After trapping and baiting to no avail, I don't know what to think any more. I have asked my husband to help lay down chicken wires on the ground to prevent anything from underneath. This is my last draw and if it doesn't work, I am going to throw in the towel. :-(

Another day another plant lost. We spent two hours yesterday laying down mesh on the ground bur today the rodent came from underground, nipped at the root and that's all it took to kill the plant.

Seems like no matter what we do we just can't stop this darn thing. We can't find the Macabee traps anywhere in Canada so all I can do now is to sit here to watch my plants die. How sad!

This is probably my last picture. There won't be any more to show after this weekend. At this point I am pretty sure it's a pocket gopher that ate our plants. Even covering the ground couldn't stop the darn thing from eating our plants from underneath. The hole in the picture is where the plant used to be.

I understand the FURY when one plant after another dies and when pulled up, it has no roots left. For YEARS we tried everything to get rid of the gophers and I bet they have killed 75% of what we have ever planted. But last month we finally caught one in a Cinch Trap- the first success ever! We thought we were home-free but another gopher has moved in and we are setting the trap again. But at least we have some hope now. Min

It has been 2 years since I posted those pictures. The bad guy got terminated when I bought a Victor black box gopher trap. It's amazing, the bad boy was caught within 30 minutes. By the time I found out about the black box trap I only had 3 plants left so it was bitter sweet. We haven't planted anything since but next time if we want to plant something I will know how to fight these rodents. :-)

Looks like Gardenweb deleted your mice pictures,..they did the same with mine,...is it so difficult seeing a dead mouse,..it's educational! Don't show your cat with a mouse! lol.

Yea I know a member complained about them. Well, some people think dead rodents are just too gross to look at. They don't bother me so that's too bad that the images bothered a few individuals. But I've learned a lot from just posting and reading replies. Some members here are very helpful.

Well I wish I had the luxury to be grossed out by dead rodents, but alas, I have to deal with them constantly or be eaten out of house and home!

It is true, though, gardenweb can be a great resource for figuring out how to deal with all sorts of issues! Glad that at least you found out how to deal with the buggers next time. Rodent issues have almost made me throw in the towel at times...so, so frustrating.

I can completely understand your frustration. Rodents are territorial and you kill one (or some) the new guys will just move in to take over.

For some unknown reasons our front yard is now rodent free. I managed to trap a pair at a time and after the last pair I refilled the holes then plugged them will rocks. I returned to inspect the area and checked for new holes and tracks periodically. It's been two years and I've found none.

The pocket gopher that drove me crazy was a loner. I trapped and killed it and the rest of the season we're gopher free. I know a new guy will come in to take over the place so I stopped planting anything for two years. I hope by leaving the place deserted will drive the rest of them looking resident somewhere else and eventually there's no more gopher scent to attract them back. If they do return I have two black boxes to take care of them.

I still have one more rodent headache, the biggest yet, to deal with - the backyard gang. We have a large composter in our backyard (just a fence away from the back land) and I used to trap them and got one or two a day. The dead bodies got smaller in size each day indicating the young ones had to come out to look for food. Activities would stop for a while then the whole cycle started over again with large mice then the small ones trapped near the composter. I know as long as the food is there they will never stop yet I don't have a solution.