372 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [159:— Dec, 1919 



September and October warn him to get out his winter overcoat, 

 so he begins at his nose and sheds his thin tawnv summer hair for a 

 new softer, thicker, darker coat. The last of October sees it nearly 

 off and the new one on. A curious line marks the region of the 

 change. November brings added fur to provide against winter 

 chills, but this coat does not push the former one off but only grows 

 in among it. 



Spring days come and he leaves his burrow to go courting but 

 does not remain in the burrow of his mate long. Perhaps solitary 

 existence has so unfitted both for gopher companionship that 

 divorce is the only sensible or plausible settlement. Should you 

 chance to meet him abroad some day, and it's apt to be a glowering 

 one, he will display his ugly spirit in a pugnacious manner, snap 

 his teeth and give low quick hisses. Better let him have the path, 

 — ycur shoe is too thin to dispute it with him in his present m.ood. 



You may be an unwilling spectator to his demise should a big 

 owl or marsh hawk pass that way, for those who have studied the 

 food of these birds in the regions west of the Mississippi, say that 

 they catch many of them. Others of his enemies are weasels and 

 big bull snakes, also the farm.er with his steel trap and arsenic 

 seasoned parsnip. The weasel with his wonderful agility and 

 wicked fangs could worst his m^ore awkward victim but how is the 

 battle carried on with sluggish, good-natured Sir BuUsnake? 

 Reports say his snakeship invariably ccnres out victorious, by 

 simply swallowing Mr. Gopher. One Nebraska observer reports 

 that when digging for a missing trap, he found the trap attached to 

 a gopher's foot protruding from a bull-snake's mouth. He had 

 swallowed the gopher but couldn't extend his jaws sufficiently to 

 engulf the trap. Upon releasing the trap, the snake's jaws closed 

 and no gopher existed. That farmer gives bull snakes free rent in 

 his clover and alfalfa fields and orchards. Dame Rumor says he 

 has been known to carry a bull snake carefully out of his com field 

 for fear of injuring it while cultivating the crop. 



The damages that farmers complain of most are the mounds 

 which clog the sickle bar of the mower, the old tussocks that leave 

 the meadow rough and smother the grass beneath them and the 

 danger of a horse being seriously injured by breaking thru into 

 their burrows. Orchardist and gardener lay in wait for the 

 gophers because of their liking for the roots of young trees and the 

 damage they do to root crops, melons, pumpkins and squashes. 



