People work hard on their lawns. Some people don’t have a choice in keeping their lawn perfect because they chose to live in a gated community that actually regulates what kind of grass you can have and will fine you for having patches of dead grass. This is a real issue and mistakes by the planning board are common. Choosing the wrong grass for the environment because they prefer the colour for instance is a disaster waiting to happen. If this is not bad enough there are also thousands of pests that can easily ruin a lawn, one of the worst and most dangerous lawns pests are gophers. These animals will dig continuously under your lawn searching for grubs to eat. It digs at a shallow level causing the ground to become unstable. Your foot can go straight through and injuries are very likely. You can twist an ankle or even break your leg by falling into a gopher hole. Gophers will also destroy your lawn, not just by digging under it and killing the roots but also by consuming helpful ground insects that can make your lawn grow better. They are severe pests and getting rid of them is not easy.
Gophers are extremely territorial. When their children grow into adulthood they immediately split up and leave to find their own place to hunt. A gopher can dig ten to fifteen different holes and tunnels in your lawn every month which will completely destroy not only your lawn but your prized rose garden and the vegetable garden as well. Gophers will burrow under a garden and eat the root vegetables from under the ground. They will eat anything they find underground that is edible or at least chewable. This includes your tree roots and cable lines. Any underground wire is in danger of being severed by the gopher. They create networks of tunnels, sinkholes, kill gardens and ruin lawns. How can you prevent or expel this kind of pest?
One of the dangers of having a gopher is that while the gopher is not a physical danger to humans, his predators very much are. You will see skunks, snakes and weasels on your lawn and in your garden attracted by the smell of a gopher. So it’s important that you act very quickly when you discover the very first hole. There are a number of solutions that can be effective if implemented together.
One of the most effective ways to get a gopher is to set up a human live trap. A live trap is a baited cage with a simple mechanical door that shuts when the trap is tripped. This will catch the gopher and supply it with enough food to last the night so it can be relocated in the morning. Remember in Ontario you cannot relocate a wild animal more than one kilometre from your home without a trapping license. You should place the trap near the entrance of the gopher hole. Make sure to bait the trap. This does not make the trap more effective in fact some professionals argue that it makes the trap less effective. What it does do is give the animal food to survive the night because you will be asleep when this animal is caught in the live trap. Good baits for a gopher are peanut butter and lettuce. They love both and baiting with both should be more effective contrary to popular opinion.
Gopher repellents are more effective than they are for city animals like raccoons who have never seen a predator in their life except for humans which they do not seem afraid of. Gophers, however, is predated by most of the wild animals that live in cities. Skunks are a major killer of gophers. The urine of a skunk or wolf will scare the gopher away but must be applied on the soil which will absorb it so a repeated application will be needed.
There is also a domestic poison solution, it is not human and the poison is a powerful chemical that can also kill other, unintended animals. What more is if you poison the gopher and another animal eats it, that animal will now be poisoned as well. Using chemical poisons is dangerous and tricky and best to be avoided unless you are a licensed exterminator.
Some people have tried a comical method called flooding. This will absolutely destroy your lawn and garden and may not actually get rid of the gopher. It is a scene from a film called Caddyshack where Bill Murray tries to get rid of a gopher on a golf course using this method. It does not actually work.
