I caught one last night in my live trap, he's been relocated to a nice piece of conservation land in another town. I've reset the trap just in case there are more of them. Does anyone know how large their colonies are?
I believe you are confusing groundhogs with prairie dogs. You're unlikely to find more than a half dozen or so groundhogs in one burrow. Note that around this time of the year the females will be giving birth, so if you trap and relocate the mother, you may be killing the young in the burrow.
I have heard in the thousands. Even heard of cases where pickups and barns have disappeared when they made enough tunnels underneath.
Steve
Some people don't like killing things, even rodents, others don't mind, others enjoy it. I have no idea where the OP falls on that spectrum. Given that he's relocated one already my guess is that he'd rather not kill them if he could avoid it.
I distinctly remember seeing it in a movie, so it must be true. As for killing all the rodents in that burrow, isn't that the point?
Steve
I don't want to kill them if I can avoid it. I've managed to trap one so I know the trap works. The groundhog was fairly passive so moving them to conservation land and then releasing them seems like the best course of action. If they were vicious then I'd consider killing them but given how tame they are I don't see any reason to harm them.
I see. Perhaps if the OP would just go to the groundhog and talk to it, it would be reasonable.
Steve
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. 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.
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".
I'll have to look at that just for grins!
It sure won't hurt. ;-) Trick is to introduce predators, and convince your neighbors not to kill them.
Honestly, if you do study up on Herpetology, you will find that America has very few poisonous reptiles. Learn to recognize those few and the rest are safe.
I'll get around to it - in my own rather disorganized manner! Update: The gophers devoured my tomato plants, the broccoli, and unexpectedly... the pimiento pepper plant. Perhaps I should have planted habenero!? Maybe horseradish? These gophers are out of control - A blackbird made the sad mistake of pecking at a trap, and hopefully left this world without suffering... And a gopher dragged its carcass, still in the trap, halfway down a gopher hole to gnaw upon it. Only halfway, because the trap was too wide to fit down the hole. Mutant, carnivorous, radioactive gophers! Run! Run for your lives!
Most rodents will eat meat. I've had trouble with gray squirrels killing my pigeons.
I ate the ones that were doing that. The current tree rats are behaving themselves.
Are there red squirrels in the US? Here they're only grey.
Yes, there are many varieties. :-)
Mm, not quite what I was looking for, but this link will work ok:
Yeah. I call some of the ground squirrels "chipmunks" too. The ground squirrels in California are very big, and cause a lot of foundation damage in some places with their burrowing. The gopher snakes I "transplanted" to kill gophers also did a number on them.
By the way, thanks for the czech. It just arrived. Hope the cactus does well for you!
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