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Mountain Shadows

By Guest Editorial Writer James Heth

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GOPHERS

Gophers are creatures God put on this planet to drive us nuts.  And we are not the only beings being driven over the edge by gophers. My poor dog  was digging in vain the other day.

I happened to glance out of our front window and noticed our dog’s butt jutting up and down in our yard with his head and body out of sight.  So I quietly slipped out of the front door to see what was going on.  Now, our dog is a Norwegian Elk Hound and in spite of millions and millions of years of evolution he is still not that far away from his wolf heritage and as a result there is not any rodent within a half a mile radius of our house and there are many holes three to five feet deep dotting the landscape. His instinct is to ferret out the gopher rascals regardless of how deep he has to dig.  So his rump was bouncing up and down and dirt was flying out behind him

However, I noticed on the other side of the yard the large moss covered boulder had a gopher sitting up on the top watching the dog with a kind of bemused look on its face.

Indeed, those million years of evolution had taught the gopher to always have an emergency exit for times like these.

Eventually the dog looked up and saw me watching.  He came over then and laid a dirt covered nose on my knee and wagged his tail.  I tried to console him by scratching his ear but I cold tell his frustration was beyond help.  In a minute or two he bounded off the deck and disappeared back into the hole. Soon dirt was flying up behind him again and things returned to normal


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Sunday September 28, 2008

Sierra Sun Times