A gopher is a small animal which looks a bit like a rat and lives in holes in the ground. Gophers are found in Canada and the USA. 2. proper noun & countable noun. In computing, Gopher is a program that collects information for you from many databases across the internet.

The origin of the word “gopher” is uncertain; the French gaufre, meaning waffle, has been suggested, on account of the gopher tunnels resembling the honeycomb-like pattern of holes in a waffle; another suggestion is that the word is of Muskogean origin.

Since gophers spend so much of their time underground, interaction with humans is limited. Still, they will bite when they feel cornered or scared. Their teeth are not particularly sharp, but the pests can still break the skin. Gopher bite sites may swell and appear red or bruised.

Once your gopher has been thoroughly cooked, it is time to eat this unique delicacy. The large bones of the gopher will contain nutritious marrow which can be ground up or cooked down in a soup for an additional meal.

Voracious pocket gophers can leave unsightly dirt mounds in yards, and they readily feed on ornamental garden plants. In their native range, however, pocket gophers are beneficial components of ecosystems. They move enormous amounts of soil every year, and therefore help to aerate the soil.

Alfalfa and dandelions are two of the most preferred plants that gophers will eat. Succulent vegetation. Fleshy roots of both plants and trees. Roots are generally the year-round source of food for gophers.

You can place all sorts of natural deterrents around your property to repel gophers. Growing plants with strong smells such as sage, daffodils, iris, thyme, and geranium will repel them, for example, as will placing fish oil, peppermint oil, coffee grounds, or tabasco sauce on the ground near gopher tunnels.

To repel gophers naturally, try putting a few drops of peppermint oil on cotton balls, and then placing the cotton balls inside tunnel entrances. Gophers do not like the smell of peppermint, so this non-lethal gopher control method is a natural gopher repellent that can help rid your yard of these subterranean rodents.

The scent of human sweat on the bait or the trap, however, may induce the gopher to burrow around the trap entirely. Gopher bait is always more attractive when it’s the best food available. Before setting out gopher traps, stop irrigating your lawn as long as you can without damaging plants.

Poison gopher baits provide homeowners with an effective and easy way to get rid of gophers. Victor® Poison Peanut pellets, in particular, are formulated to be enticing to gophers. When consumed, the poison pellets work quickly to kill the gopher. Placing the gopher bait in the right location is the key to success.

As a matter of fact, there are a number of ways you can eradicate gophers. One of the major and most effective methods is killing them by use of bleach and ammonia.

After you have finished brewing a cup of coffee, sprinkle the grounds into the tunnels and cover them with soil. You can also mix the coffee grounds into your soil. It will help repel the gophers while fertilizing your plants. The strong smell will send the gophers away.

For a homemade remedy, mix three parts castor oil and one part dish soap. Add four tablespoons of the mixture to a gallon of water. Soak the tunnels and entrances to evict the moles and soak the holes to evict gophers. Castor oil is one of the most effective home remedies to get rid of these animals.

Flooding Gophers Out of the Yard Flooding is a non-lethal way to get rid of gophers. To drive out gophers, you should flood the tunnels quickly and dramatically. Prepare a row of five-gallon buckets of water and get some helpers to pour them all down the gopher holes at the same time.

These pests stick around when you have moist, cool, healthy dirt. The better your lawn looks, the better chance of housing moles or gophers. They feed off of insects and plant roots.

GOPHER CONTROL Some have reported that the use of chewing gum or chocolate laxatives will kill gophers, but Rex Marsh, vertebrate pest control specialist at UC Davis, fed these treats to gophers in captivity and found that most simply developed a sweet tooth.

To protect yourself and your pets, dispose of dead gopher by wearing gloves, double bag it, and dispose of it in the garbage.

Activity:Gophers may be active during any season of the year and at any time of day. They live and forage underground and only very rarely emerge from their burrows to gather food. They are also extremely territorial and will fight to the death to protect their tunnel systems and food caches from intruders.

Pocket gophers live in a burrow system that can cover an area that is 200 to 2,000 square feet. The burrows are about 2½ to 3½ inches in diameter. Feeding burrows are usually 6 to 12 inches below ground, and the nest and food storage chamber can be as deep as 6 feet, depending on soil type.

Gopher Holes Gopher hills are usually crescent-shaped. If you have gopher holes in your yard, they’ll likely have the following features: Crescent mound of dirt. Gopher holes are distinguishable by crescent-shaped mounds of dirt in the yard.

noun. a hole in the ground made by gophers. see more. type of: hole, hollow. a depression hollowed out of solid matter.

Gophers can be active at all hours of the day and don’t hibernate during the winter, so they are active all year-round.

Gophers breed only once or twice a year, typically in the spring. Female gophers give birth to three or four young per litter after a gestation period of less than three weeks. The young develop rapidly and by five weeks are weaned and ready to establish their own burrows.

Gophers are active during the day and are fossorial, which means they live most of their lives underground. They eat, forage, sleep and have their babies underground. They do all of this alone, though. Often, gophers will share their burrows with other creatures.

Main predators include badgers, coyotes, weasels, and snakes, but other predators include skunks, owls, bobcats, and hawks. Gophers are predated and caught at their burrow entrance by most predators, however weasels and snakes can enter gopher burrows to hunt.

Food is cut into small pieces and stored in the fur lined cheek pouches for transportation. Pocket gophers do not drink water, apparently getting sufficient moisture from the vegetable matter. Their tunnels also provide a storage system for water when snow melts into the burrows.

Most states classify gophers as non-game animals, which means they can only be killed when they are causing damage. This denotes that you cannot go out into the wild and lawfully kill gophers for sport. Gophers must be causing demonstrable damage on your property to justify your killing them.

Within any species, the males are larger than the females and can be nearly double their weight. Most gophers have brown fur that often closely matches the color of the soil in which they live. Their most characteristic features are their large cheek pouches, from which the word “pocket” in their name derives.

If possible, they will burrow beneath a plant, chew off the roots and pull it through the ground by the stem. Food is cut into small pieces and stored in the fur lined cheek pouches for transportation. Pocket gophers do not drink water, apparently getting sufficient moisture from the vegetable matter.