Max's First Gopher

After a few days of rest at home - inside - after his adventure at Leif's, Max was ready to go back outside. On Thursday evening after returning home from work, we let Max outside while we walked to the mailbox. When we got back, Max was in the garden and seemed particularly talkative. Upon entering the house, we found this on the dining room floor:

Bigger than a vole,
smaller than a rabbit

It's a pocket gopher! While we were out for our walk Max had apparently caught one of these elusive destroyers-of-yards. We've been losing the war against the gophers for some time; in fact, we've basically given up. Our lawn is covered with piles and patches of dirt that have been pushed up by the burrowing animals. Pretty nasty looking dude.

We like to think that this is Max's way of apologizing for the stress he put us through on Monday. ;)

When Max has caught animals in the past, he has always (to the best of our knowledge, anyway) brought them inside to whichever room we were in at the time, in order to show off his catch. We let him play with them for a while, but when they start to ooze or crunch we take them away before they make too much of a mess. This time, though, we weren't there to referee.

Circle of blood

Witness the "circle of blood". In all likelihood the gopher was already dead when Max brought him in, so this "ring of death" is just an indication of where he played with it. Thankfully Max decided to confine his "play" to the hardwood floor in the dining room. I don't relish the idea of cleaning gopher blood from the carpet.

With any luck, this will turn out to be the gopher that has been terrorizing our garden this year.

- Mike (& Corinne)