Chapter 11

PESTS AND PETS


The pocket gopher is an herbivorous animal which attains approximately
the size of a gray squirrel. It has a sleek, grey-brown coat of fur
which is almost as fine as that of the mole and would, I think, make a
good quality fur except that the skin is too tender to stand either
sewing or the wear that fur coats have to undergo. I learned this by
trapping them and having a furrier try them out, as I knew that the
quickest way to get rid of a pest is to eat it or use its hide. Since I
found its hide to be of no practical value, I enjoined my troop of Boy
Scouts, a willing group of boys, to carry out my suggestions that they
skin and prepare one of these animals in a stew. Gophers are purely
herbivorous and I thought they should be quite edible, but as I am a
strict vegetarian myself, I had to depend on them to make this
experiment. The boys followed instructions up to the point of cooking,
but by that time the appearance of the animal had so deprived them of
their enthusiasm and appetites that I had no heart to urge them to
continue. I am still of the opinion, however, that to meat-eating
people, the pocket gopher would taste as good as squirrel or pigeon.

The first introduction I had to the devastating work that these animals
can do in an orchard was when I was working among my young apple and
plum trees one spring. I noticed that the foliage was turning yellow on