Omelet wrote:
In article ,
none ""Mark\"@(none)" wrote:

Omelet wrote:
In article ,
jellybean stonerfish wrote:

On Thu, 15 May 2008 10:11:31 -0500, Omelet wrote:

Prairie dogs are good for long range marksmanship practice. ;-)
Also great exercisers for a dog. Fun to chase, but impossible to catch.
Hee! Might have to try that with the border collie...
I've never seen a groundhog or prairie dog, but we've got countless
gophers at my new workplace (where I'm trying to set up a small veg
garden). I've tried several of the more traditional baits to trap the
burrowing little garden-guerrillas and tomato-terrorists but to date
they seem to lust most after bits of greasy breaded skin from leftover
supermarket fried chicken, if they can get to it before the ants carry
it all away. I trapped six gophers in one day using two traps when I
switched from peanut butter or grain baits to fried chicken.

I was given the choice to move here or become unemployed - I'm still not
certain I made the right decision...

Well...

How are you at snake hunting?

When we lived in the foothills above the Mojave desert in Californica,
(above Lancaster), we had a HORRIBLE time with gophers and moles.
Cats are better than dogs at killing those, but it still was not
enough...

We used to have to take our own garbage to the local landfill. There was
a spot in the Antelope Valley where they were using the San Andreas
fault fissure as a landfill. g I'm not kidding...

Anyhoo, the roads thru the desert leading to the landfills and sunset
often had snakes laying out on the roads to stay warm while the desert
cooled. Mostly gopher snakes, kingsnakes and the occasional mojave
green. We left those (the rattlesnakes) alone of course!

We'd stop for the beneficials and pick them up. Some would die on the
way home as they'd already been run over by another car and you could
not always tell they were fatally injured. sigh

Anyway, we introduced about a dozen or more snakes into gopher holes
over a two year period.

The gopher and mole problem TOTALLY disappeared, and it put a dent in
the local ground squirrel population too. :-)

Natural predators always work better than traps and poison IME.

I also kept the occasional snake as a pet. I fed them using a baited
repeater mouse trap...

That sounds like an excellent idea!
I'd been considering using a "Rodenator" (As seen on YouTube).

I've seen only one very small snake since moving to Kennewick, WA.
It was coiled up on the hallway carpet, in front of a restroom at work.

I'll assume that means there are snakes outside the building as well,
since most snakes aren't civilized enough to come indoors and wait in
line to use the toilet... (grin)

Considering the size and ferocity of our gophers, I'd better choose only
large snakes. Perhaps I should read up on them first, as I know only
"Stay away from snakes with rattles".