TRAPPING GOPHERS
Our old dog Nimp was convinced that the way to get a gopher was to dig him out. Doctor Hornaday tells an amusing story about his having that same conviction when a boy. Many a night Nimp would come home from the pasture, panting, his coat all rough with the reddish soil that we knew had come out of a gopher hole. Weary, yes, but discouraged, never. The old dog would go back to his job morning after morning. Sometimes we would try to help by carrying buckets full of water and "drowning him out." Never did Nimp scent a gopher near the cattle well but once, and then the boys drowned him out with a vengeance. The hunted little creature leaped out of a hole so unexpectedly near where the boys sat that one turned a complete somersault and landed in the last pailful of water. Nimp was quicker than his masters and soon laid the bedraggled little miner at our feet. We felt pretty small.
Very little can be said in defence of the gopher. He is an undeniable nuisance and helps to bring the farmer's crop down to a lower figure than it ought to be. Traps and poisoned vegetables are swifter methods of dealing with the case than digging, for the gopher is himself past master in the art of digging.