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
many of them and upon investigation I found that the trees were very
loose in the ground. At first I thought that planting operations and
heaving of the ground by frost in the spring might be the cause, but in
testing the looseness of one of these trees, I found that I could pull
it out of the ground easily. There I saw what appeared to be the marks
of an axe. I was completely convinced that I had personal enemies who
went around nights chopping off the roots of my trees, for I knew that
most of my neighbors were completely out of sympathy with my tree
cultivation. In fact, farmers living in that section of the country were
always poking fun at my nut tree plantings and orchard work, for their
idea of what was proper on a farm was a treeless field of plowed ground.
As I thought of all these things, I pulled up many other trees; in fact,
there were dozens that were chopped off so that they could be completely
pulled out. Others still had one or two roots clinging to the main
trunk and these I carefully replanted so that they would continue to
live and grow.
Not long after the tragic day on which I found all these ravaged trees,
I noticed, winding in and out close to the young orchard trees, the
mounds which pocket gophers make when they tunnel under the ground. I
followed some of these by digging into them with a shovel, and
discovered that they led to the roots of trees, the very trees that had
been chopped off and killed. My enemies were not human after all.
Sending for a pamphlet from the U. S. Department of Agriculture, I
studied the material given about pocket gophers and their habits. I then
began their systematic eradication, using about twelve steel muskrat
traps. I succeeded in trapping, in one season, over thirty of them, at a
time when they were so prolific and their holes so numerous that I could
not drive a horse through the orchard without danger of breaking one of
its legs. I also used poisoned grains and gases but I do not recommend
them. Trapping is the only method in which one obtains actual evidence
of elimination. It took me many years to force the gophers out of my
orchards and I still must set traps every fall, during September and
October when they are most active. Their habits are such that they do
most of their tunnelling in the early fall months, before frost, during
which time they expose and isolate the roots on which they intend to
feed during the winter months when the ground is so hard that they
cannot burrow further. This period is when they are most easily trapped.
It was with the idea of establishing a balance of nature against these
animals that I conceived the idea of importing bull snakes. Almost
everyone has heard of the bull snake, but its name is a poor one, for it
has the wrong connotation. These snakes are actually a fine friend to
the farmer since each snake accounts for the death of many rodents each
year. Their presence certainly was of definite value in decreasing the
number at my farm. Bull snakes have the long body typical of
constrictors, sometimes reaching a length of nearly six feet at
maturity, and being at the most an inch and one-half in diameter. This
country had a natural abundance of such snakes at one time but ignorance
and superstition have lessened their number so that it is now a rare
thing to find one. During the early days of automobiles, these huge bull
snakes, or gopher snakes, as I prefer to call them, would lie across the
sunny, dusty roads, and drivers of cars delighted in running them down.
Since they are very docile, they are the least afraid of man of any
members of the local snake family. They are slow in movement until they
sense the immediate presence of their natural food, which is live mice,
rats, gophers, squirrels, young rabbits, and sometimes, though rarely,
birds. Then it is they become alert, and the horny appendage on their
tails vibrates with a high-pitched, buzzing sound, simulating, although
not similar to, the sound of a poisonous rattlesnake.
When I first brought some of these snakes to my farm, I loosed them and
they wandered off to a neighbor's premises where they were promptly
found and killed. Later importations I confined to my basement, where I
built an artificial pool with frogs and fish in it. However, I could
never induce the bull snakes to eat any of these batrachians. They
would, almost playfully, stalk the frogs, but at the moment when one was
within reach, the snake would glide away. Neither would the snakes,
unless force-fed, eat anything they had not caught themselves.
My children were delighted to have the snakes there and made pets of
them. Only once was one of the girls bitten when she attempted
force-feeding. The bite was a mere scratch but we feared that it might
be slightly poisonous. However, it healed so promptly that it was quite
apparent that the bull snake's bite is not toxic. I, too, have had my
skin slightly punctured by their teeth, but always the wound healed with
no more pain or trouble than a pin prick. Such is not at all the case
when a person is nipped by a squirrel or gopher. I have purposely
allowed a pocket gopher to bite me, to determine what the effects are.
The pain was severe and healing was slow. Once, bitten by a gray
squirrel when I reached into a hollow tree to get it, I received such a
wound that fever started in my whole hand. Its teeth punctured a
finger-nail and were stopped only by meeting the bone. Such bites I
consider rather poisonous.
Rabbits also committed much damage at my nursery by gnawing the bark of
my trees, especially during times of deep snow. They did not bother the
walnuts particularly, but were very fond of hickories and pecan trees.
On the smallest ones, they cut branches off and carried them away to
their nests. On larger trees, they gnawed the bark off of most of the
lower branches. This was dangerous but seldom fatal, whereas the gnawing
of mice, near the base of the trunks, was such that in some cases when
complete girdling occurred, it was necessary to use bridge-grafting to
save the trees. This consists of connecting the bark immediately above
the roots with the bark above the girdled portion, so that the tree can
receive and send the food substances it elaborates to its upper and
lower parts.
Rabbits and mice, therefore, had to be dealt with. Of course, one could
go hunting for rabbits and later eat them. This was one task I had my
employees do. I, myself, was unwilling to take an active part in it,
although still intent on saving my trees in spite of my pity for the
little animals. Placing hundreds of cans in the orchard, with a pinch of
poisoned wheat and oat mixture in each, helped to eradicate the mice.
The bait was placed inside the cans to prevent birds from being
poisoned, and the cans were tipped at an angle so that water would not
enter them.
To be absolutely sure of preventing mice damage, one should provide each
tree with a screen guard. I have made about 10,000 screen protectors for
my trees for this purpose. I have also trapped rabbits which we were not
able to shoot and I conceived the idea of painting the traps with white
enamel. When these were set on the snow around those trees which the
rabbits attacked, they worked very successfully. The traps were a size
larger than the common gopher trap, but were not expensive. There are
other ways of catching rabbits or curtailing their activities, but on my
list, shooting comes first, with trapping as a second effective measure.
Squirrels, although they do no damage to the trees themselves, except on
rare occasions, are a definite nuisance when they come in large numbers
and cut down nuts before they are ripe. They do this to hickory nuts,
and apparently are very fond of the half-ripened nuts. I have seen
squirrels chew hickory buds and young sprouts of hickory grafts and I
had to trap several before I stopped them from doing this to certain
ornamental trees in our garden. In fact, when one has a large nut
orchard, squirrels will be attracted in number that preclude the
possibility of harvesting a crop unless measures are taken to banish
them. They are very active early in the morning and my experiences
indicate that two or three people should hunt them together, as they are
very clever at dodging a single hunter. I also have built galvanized
metal guards around isolated trees which prevent squirrels from climbing
them.
In speaking of mice, we have two important species commonly known as the
meadow mouse and the other species known as the white-footed mouse. The
meadow mouse is the one that does so much damage to the orchard trees
and young nursery stock if unprotected, and the white-footed mouse may
be responsible for some of this when present in great numbers, but of
the white-footed mouse this much good can be said:
[Illustration: Drwg. by Wm. Kuehn. _Squirrel guards._]
Much of its diet, especially of the mother mouse during the time that
she is nursing her young ones, is made up of insects. A personal
experience accentuates this. Since these are such pretty little
creatures, having such cunning ways, it was my ambition to catch a
complete family of mother and young ones which sometimes numbered as
high as ten. My ambition was finally gratified and I was able to get a
mother of eight and her tiny mouslings, which have a habit of fastening
themselves securely to her breasts while she runs about, and drags them
all along in a most ludicrous fashion. At times, under these
circumstances, the combined weight of the brood exceeds that of the
mother mouse but they are exceptionally strong creatures for their size,
a mature mouse being able to jump out of a 3-foot barrel with one leap.
In observing this brood of mice, I was particularly anxious to see what
kind of a diet they throve on and tried the mother's appetite with
tidbits from the table. While she ate most everything, it soon became
apparent that something was wrong because the young ones became weaker,
finally to the extent that they were unable to nurse, and one morning I
found several on their backs with their feet feebly waving in the air
indicating that they were dying of starvation. At about that time I was
drying some hazelnuts on a flat back porch floor and in sweeping them up
found a lot of alive and dried up larvae which had escaped from the
shells. Just for fun, I swept this material up and threw it into the
mouse cage. The reaction of this treatment was gratifying, for the
mother mouse pounced upon this insect life greedily devouring
everything. Within three days, the young mice were all in good health
and running around showing that the milk produced from the diet that I
had been giving the mother was inadequate for the baby mice. It is
therefore to their credit to state that these mice and probably at times
the meadow mice do consume large quantities of larvae and grubs in the
surface soil, as well as mature active insects, such as crickets and
grasshoppers.
HOW TO PREPARE RODENT PROTECTORS FOR TREES
1. Cut 6" strips from 24" wide roll of galvanized screen with a 12 x 12
mesh.
2. Cut strips in half to make two protectors from each strip.
3. Make bundles of 25 each by running wire through protectors.
4. Dip these bundles in a solution containing 5 pounds of red lead per
gallon of linseed oil. Use from 3 to 5 gallons of this solution.
5. Remove bundles and hang them on a pole with a drip pan beneath to
catch the solution, which can be used again. Allow bundles to drip for 8
hours, then separate each protector and place on grass for a few days to
dry.
6. Roll each protector around a 3/4" pipe or broomstick and it is ready
for the tree.
[Illustration: Drwg. by Wm. Kuehn. _Preparation of screen guards._]
In dealing with wild creatures, one must forebear condemning a whole
species of animals merely because at times they become troublesome, for
the main purpose of their existence, like owls, hawks and crows, they
may be more beneficial than otherwise.
A good word should be said here for skunks and moles. A great deal of
the skunk diet is insect life. The same is true of the mole whose diet
probably consists of 75% insects, mostly in their larval state. This is
an important feature of mole and skunk as they dig these insects out
before they mature into winged female adults which may lay hundreds of
eggs. If these larvae should be allowed to develop into a mature winged
insect that would lay eggs, this particular insect would multiply itself
hundreds of times over and it would take many more birds than at present
exist to take over the big job of keeping the balance between necessary
insect life and a surplus which would be destructive to all plant life.
We can never hope to eradicate all insect life which we deplore as being
deleterious to the interests of mankind, and it is mighty well that we
cannot do this for the insects are as important to us as all other life,
for without them we would be unable to produce the vast quantities of
foods that are now dependent upon such insect life. It is true that
they take their toll of the food that they are instrumental in
sometimes producing but when one attempts to unravel the mystery of
balance of nature one is confronted by the big question of how far to go
in the eradication of both animals and insect pests. Before man's
interference the wild crops were plentiful and balances were kept in
harmony by vast multitudes of frogs and toads, birds and rodents, all of
which have been slaughtered and reduced by such amounts as to endanger
man's food supply, forcing him to resort to poison sprays and other
measures in order to hold destruction in check. All of this expense and
trouble he could have avoided if he had been sensible enough to observe
the natural checks and foster the natural procedure of which nature is
the best guide.