Gopher Girl Gasses Gophers

It was just another day in the world of gophers in Novato. "Nothing to worry about today," they clucked and squeaked to each other. "The sun is out and the grass up there is green." ...or was it.

Little did they know that my neighbor, who in order to protect the innocent we'll just call Glen, has brought in Meg McSweeney, aka The Gopher Girl. Their plan, gas the gophers.

Yes, I know, how unMarin! I mean this is a county that actually put a wild turkey under 24-hour nurse care when it was accidentally hit in traffic (true, front page news in the Marin Independent Journal at the time). So the idea of building a rig with the sole purpose of killing little furry critters is kind of controversial.

This weekend, Glen and the Gopher Girl, came by to let me know of their diabolical plan. She seemed friendly, enough, but deep behind those cold dark eyes was the empty heart of a rodent hater. I've seen it before. The strategy session went something like this:   

Sure, it seemed harmless enough, but I hadn't seen the rig yet. Here's how it works: (though captions are not entirely factual, this is a real picture of the rig pumping away in my neighbors' driveway.)

That's right, though towed by an environmentally clean vehicle (apparently it was too heavy for a Prius), this rig is designed to pump CO2 into gopher holes and gas them to death. As of the writing of this blog, they've been pumping for about two hours now.

For those of you wondering what happened after Gopher Girl was done, well, thankfully it was captured on video to try and save other neighborhoods before they go to war with the gophers: