Marauding gophers

It's so good to be home: back with the ravenous mosquitoes, my overgrown garden, tufts of grass that are going to seed, and the first of the summer's soapberries.

The weekend before we left Brandon, someone poisoned some gophers in a nearby park. Their corpses littered the area around a public swimming pool. Coincidentally, the same day, a vigilante gopher-battler published a letter in the paper complaining about mobs of marauding gophers who are frightening seniors in the area (!) and generally presenting a hazard to humanity. This person was calling for a total elimination of the gopher population in the neighbourhood. (!!)

I sent a little letter in response to the gopher poisoning incident, and it was published in Monday's Brandon Sun. Here is my letter, below.

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My children and I are visiting here from the Yukon, and one thing we really like about Brandon is the variety of wildlife habitat and the diverse plants and animals we can see here. We were shocked and appalled to discover that someone appears to have poisoned gophers in the Keystone pool area. Whoever did this seems to have no concern for the well-being of children who play there, other animals who might consume the toxic gopher corpses, and the gophers themselves. Gophers too have their rightful place in nature.

Poisoning urban gophers is ineffective, as the population will happily rebound, and the poison could head on up the food chain, lowering the numbers of other animals who prey on the gophers. Gophers love to make their homes in cleared and disturbed areas. If you want to have fewer gophers, try changing the landscape so itʼs less inviting to them. In the meantime, letʼs not wage war on nature.

Mr. Gruff says, "Don't kill gophers!"