140 The Pocket Gopher. 



that he has added something which will increase the volume 

 of gas arising from the bisulfid. More attention might be 

 paid to his claim if efficiency depended upon volume alone. 



Trapping. Although somewhat slow, there is no surer 

 method of ridding one's premises of pocket gophers than by 

 trapping. When you have the animal fast in the jaws of a 

 trap you are certain that his career of uselessness is over. If 

 the gopher were as wise as a rat we would not be permitted to 

 indulge this feeling very often, but a long series of experi- 

 ments has convinced me that he will blunder into almost any 

 sort of trap that is set for him, no matter how we set it. Long 

 experience in the wiles of man, as a result of living in the 

 nooks and corners of his habitations, has developed by natural 

 selection a race of rats that is proverbial for sagacity. Such 

 shrewdness the pocket gopher will never know, at least not 

 until after many generations of contact with his sworn enemy, 

 man. On the other hand, it is true that a "burned child dreads 

 the fire," and after a gopher has once been nipped by a trap 

 that failed to hold him he becomes more or less wary, and the 

 trap must be set in a different way or poison must be employed 

 to get him. 



As stated elesewhere, trapping is a good method of com- 

 bating gophers if the field to be cleared of the pest is small 

 or if over a large area there are but a few scattered gopher 

 tenants. If the landowner is vigilant, the career of any in- 

 vader may with little trouble be ended by the use of the trap. 

 The objections to trapping are that it is slower than poisoning 

 and more expensive, particularly the latter if one must hire 

 somebody to do the work. While I have elsewhere in this bul- 

 letin presented objections to the bounty system as a public 

 measure, I believe that money paid for gopher scalps by indi- 

 vidual landowners is wisely expended. Give your boys or your 

 neighbor's boys a chance to earn a little pocket money, and thus 

 by expending dimes save dollars on your crops. Furthermore, 

 as the number of gophers on your place diminishes raise the 

 price per scalp now and then, so that the boys may be encour- 

 aged to complete the extermination. This is strictly a business 

 proposition. No busy farmer need give much of his time to 

 the work, but he will find that the average boy will get as 

 much satisfaction out of earning money by trapping wild ani- 

 mals as he will from expending the same in the various chan- 



