74 WILD ANIMALS OF GLACIER NATIONAL PARK. 



and tne mounds are close together. Deer and other animals often 

 step on the soft g-i-oimd over the tunnels and break through, but 

 the opening is promptly closed by the occupants. As the older 

 burrows become more broken uj), however, they are gradually aban- 

 doned and closed up back of the fresher tunnels which are always 

 kept in good repair. 



In the hotel gardens at Glacier Park seven or eight pocket gophers 

 Avere reveling in the beds of onions, peas, beans, and potatoes. I 

 caught two of these in the onion beds, from which most of the young 

 onions had disappeared as far as the pocket gopher hills extended, 

 and found their stomachs well filled with onions and their whole 

 bodies strongly scented with them. Two others caught in a patch of 

 green peas had cut and dragged the plants into their burrows and 

 eaten them — tops, peas, and all — so that along their lines of travel 

 nothing but weeds remained. Their stomachs were full of pea vines, 

 and the characteristic odor of the plants was very noticeable when 

 the 'pocket gophers were, being skinned. These four were taken one 

 evening with two gopher traps, but as I was leaving early in the 

 morning T did not have time to get the remaining animals, and they 

 probably spent the summer feasting on fresh young vegetables that 

 were not intended for their use. An hour's trapping w^ould have 

 removed all from the garden, and as others slowly worked their w-ay in 

 from the surrounding grassland they could easily have been caught. 

 With a long-bladed knife or flat stick it Avas a simple matter to 

 follow down the closed tunnel where the soil had been thrown out 

 until the open burrows were found 6 or 8 inches below the surface; 

 then, by cleaning out the loose earth with my hand and slipping a 

 gopher trap down into the burrow and half closing the opening thus 

 made, it took but a few minutes to place the trap where it would 

 catch and kill the animal when he came along. These animals were 

 caught in the Macabee gopher trap, but several other kinds are almost 

 as effective. 



Pocket gophers never become fat and do not hibernate, so- in winter 

 their l)urrows merely run deeper below the frozen ground and they 

 still obtain ample food from the roots and underground vegetation. 

 The passages are usually kept open to the surface of the ground, 

 where the loose earth from the excavations is pushed out under the 

 snow, and along these surface tunnels some food is obtained from 

 green vegetation and the bark of trees and bushes. 



While the home life of these animals forms an interesting sub- 

 ject for close study, it is so difficult to observe them that few people 

 take any special, interest in them or usually notice more than their 

 little earth mounds on the surface. Those Avho are raising crops or 

 gardens are the ones most likely to be interested in them, and this 

 from purely economic reasons. What little is Imown of their habits 



