Rex and I were out for a walk around the block. We came upon my neighbor, Jay Throckmorton, walking across his front yard. He had a coil of wire slung over his shoulder and under his arm. He appeared to be on a mission.
“Mornin’, Jay.”
“Mornin’, Tom. Mornin’, Rexie.”
“Ah, Jay, what you up to?”
“Gophers.”
“Gophers?”
“Yep. Gophers. Making my life miserable for years. Tryin’ something new.”
As Rex and I walked over to a gopher mound in Jay’s front yard, Jay unslung his wire bandoleer.
Rex sniffed the gopher mound, and Jay squatted down and explained to Rex his latest endeavor to rid the
yard of gophers, not unlike Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry explaining to Opie how to put a worm on a fishing hook.
“And that, Rexie, is how I’m going to kill that dad-gum gopher.” Jay’s plan was to fill the hole with acetylene gas and attach an electric match to the gopher’s bunker and blow him to smithereens. Rex sniffed the hole again and looked up to me. I could see the wheels turning in little Rexie’s golf-ball-sized brain.
As Jay unrolled the copper wire and stuck one end at the mouth of the gopher hole, he explained his past failures. “Tried the garden hose several times. Soil’s too sandy, and they build a very deep hole in their burrows that let water escape the tunnel, which it does. Great engineers. Tried Map gas—welder’s gas—but that dissipated too quickly. Tried mothballs. That didn’t work. Supposed to, you know. Doesn’t work. Nope.”
Rex went around to Jay’s side yard. I called out to Rex, “Hey, we’re going to have some heavy-duty blasting here in a minute, Rex. Get back here.” I heard Rex barking soft little “woofs.” “Rex, get back here.” No Rex.
Jay continued his history of gopher assaults as I envisioned a scene from Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. “Then I tried a guillotine device that showed promise but didn’t deliver a victory; the gophers won that time, too.”
Jay’s wife Ellen came out on the front porch with a tray of lemonade, wearing a pensive smile. “He never gives up.”
“Mornin’, Ellen.”
“Mornin’, Tom. I thought I saw Rexie out here a minute ago. Have some lemonade.”
“He’s around in the side yard.”
I went to the side yard and saw Rex digging furiously. “Rex! What the hell are you doing?” He shot me an indignant look for distracting him.
I was about to reprimand him again, but stopped as I noticed the gopher poke his head up out of the bottom of Rex’s crater. The gopher pulled himself up and out into the open as Rex bent down and picked the gopher up in his mouth. Rex, gopher in mouth, walked over to the side fence, shimmied under it, and returned to Jay’s yard in a second—without the gopher.
“Hey, Tom,” yelled Jay. “Come back over here; don’t want you to get hurt when this baby goes off. Bring Rex, too.”
I picked up Rex and returned to ground zero. I sipped lemonade and held Rex under my other arm.
Jay’s eyes flashed with maniacal evil as he set the electric match just inside the gopher hole and sealed it shut.
We all stood at attention as he did a theatrical countdown. “Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . ONE!”
Kabbbbbbooooooooooommmm!
Jay smiled, sensing final victory. “No gopher could live through that! Ha ha ha!”
I ran to the side yard, and, seeing the crater Rex had made, said, “Holy smokes Jay! Come look at this crater. Must have been a gas pocket. Must a’ blown that critter sky-high!”
Jay and Ellen ran over to witness the huge, gaping hole. I sat Rex down and he sniffed the hole and shimmied under the fence.
He returned in a moment, wagging his tail. I knew why he was wagging his tail. He knew why he was wagging his tail. Jay? He thought his gopher troubles were over.
* * *
Tom and / or Rex can be reached at burns100@earthlink.net.
