The first and last time I saw a gopher on a leash, my cousin was at the
other end of it.
He was, at that time, a tow-headed, precocious six year old –
precocious as demonstrated by snaring a gopher with binder twine and
bringing it home as his proclaimed new pet.
“His name is Squeak,” said tow-head.
Squeak, alternately cowering and fighting at the end of his twine,
confirmed it. Repeatedly.
As pets go, Squeak was none too friendly. Besides his loquaciousness,
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he was a biter. And certain members of the family also suspected Squeak
had fleas, although they didn’t get close enough to confirm it.
That long-ago incident makes me wonder about the safety of offering
Squeak’s distant relatives to customers in Ontario pet stores.
As various media reported last week, gophers retail for $249 each in
Oakville, and that doesn’t include a cage or food.
No doubt Wes Popescul, who won Saskatchewan’s recent gopher derby by
bagging 6,271 gophers, has done the math and compared his derby
winnings of about $500 with the $1.56 million he would have received
selling the same number of pesky rodents as pets down East.
Of course, trapping gophers alive is more time consuming that the
commonly used lead poisoning method of control, so let’s say Popescul
was only able to capture half his eventual total. That’s still
$780,000, less the cost of shipping and handling. One shudders to
imagine what hijinks could ensue when shipping and handling 3,135
gophers. Might be enough to cause a postal strike.
Getting back to the Squeak saga, little tow-head took the gopher home
to his dad, a man who had spent weeks watching the multiplication of
Squeak’s family in hay fields. He had seen holes and mounds form the
centre of ever-widening brown circles of decimated forage, in a year
when there wasn’t going to be enough forage to go around.
When little tow-head got up the next morning, Squeak was gone.
I heard, third or fourth hand, that he at first thought the
rambunctious new pet had escaped and was roaming the house.
Before the resulting hysteria among the rest of the family reached
fever pitch, tow-head’s dad said Squeak had gone to join a whole bunch
of his friends in a very happy place.
Tow-head, at six still na•ve to euphemism, figured that sounded like a
pretty good place for Squeak.
