242 SECOND THOUSAND QUESTIONS IN AGRICULTURE 



A sure way to kill rats is to get some Victor rat traps and bait them 

 with dried French prunes. The trap costs 15 cents. I have tried different 

 bait, but the dried prune is the only sure way. C. A. Iverson, Paso Robles. 



Walling-Out Gophers. 



/ am growing alfalfa with a sprinkling system with network of pipes 

 as the land is gravelly and porous and it is impossible to flood to drown 

 the pests. I have had a fairly good stand, but in spite of cats and traps 

 the alfalfa is riddled with gopher holes, which are destroying the roots. I 

 have thought o/ putting a rock and cement wall around the alfalfa field, 

 going four to six feet deep and two feet above ground. Can gophers go 

 deeper than this? There is plenty of rock on the place and we can do the 

 work ourselves. Has this ever been tried? 



You will surely get no gophers to speak of from -the outside if you 

 build such a wall, but it will be fiercely expensive in digging and masonry 

 even if you do all the work yourself. We believe that gophers do not 

 go as deep as four or six feet. We cannot find record of any extreme 

 depth found by those who have studied burrows by abundant excavation, 

 but they are said by all investigators to be shallow and only a little 

 deeper for housing purposes. Few if any would dig under a wall half 

 the depth you mention. They do surface running at night, during the 

 mating season, but probably a one-foot barrier would stop that. If you 

 build one foot above ground and two feet below you will practically have 

 them shut out. 



You can also protect your place very largely by digging a ditch with 

 vertical sides two feet deep all around it and keeping that ditch open. 

 Dig the width of a coal oil can and bury cans even with the bottom of the 

 ditch at intervals of twenty-five feet. Digging gophers will take headers 

 into the ditch, run along the bottom of it until they plump into the oil 

 cans, from which they cannot climb out. Such pitfalls have been con- 

 siderably used and captures of gophers by the hundreds have been 

 reported. Cats have also been seen to help themselves from the cans so 

 you can have a combined ditch, can and cat system which will work 

 automatically. If in addition to this protection you get the knack of using 

 (traps to catch those now inside the patch, you may get a little rest and 

 more alfalfa. 



Poisoning Gophers. 



Are there any newer and better ways with gophers? 



Take a narrow pine board which will split easily and straight and 

 saw off blocks sufficient to make, say, from 100 to 1,000 "toothpicks" 

 about three and a half inches long. I sharpen both ends of each "pick." 

 Next, I put a raisin (into which I have pricked a little strychnine) on 

 one end of pick and place in a tight fruit-jar labeled "Poison." These I 

 keep in stock. I carry in my vest pocket, in a suitable receptacle, about 

 twenty of these impaled raisins. When I discover an open hole I simply 

 plant the sharpened end of the pick into the side or roof of the hole, 

 and the gopher cannot help but see it, and nineteen out of twenty will 

 eat it and die. I put one into each opening. J. H. Hubbard. 



