100% GREEN, ENVIRONMENTALLY SAFE, NON-TOXIC
Damages that gophers are responsible for are endless:
- Destroyed landscaping
- Chewed through wiring
- Chewed through drip, sprinkler and irrigation lines
- Blown out and washed away ditches and roads
- Collapse of walls, sidewalks and roads
- Levee and canal failure
- Foundation cracking and failure
- Will cause major electrical shorts, cracking and blowouts of swimming pools and below-ground hot tubs.
- Interior walls of home damaged
- Massive sink holes
- Backfill and urine damage to interior walls
- Septic and leach bed failure
- Loss of structural integrity
- Loss of irrigation (agricultural)
- Injuries to humans, pets and livestock
- Diseases; microbial, parasitic and transmittable through fleas
- Financial losses
- Loss of property and home
- Not claimable by through most insurance companies
When it comes to pocket gophers, they will always tunnel under or next to something that will give them structure for their own tunnels and dens.
Gophers are incredibly intelligent, and know how to keep their tunnels and dens secure.
It's when humans get involved that are not educated in how to safely eradicate these rodents, and how to restore the loss of foundation once they're gone, that major problems will occur.
Gophers have been around for so long, my sons theory of the loss of the Aztec and Mayan Civilizations were because of the gophers.
During his visit to the ancient temple ruins, he noted the massive population of pocket gophers, even filming them. Those ancient people were farmers, had irrigation systems as well. If they were unable to stop these incredibly destructive and hungry rodents, they surely would have starved to death. It's something to consider.
Common areas for gophers to den are under homes and structures, especially where there is water, and cooler temps. Gophers also utilize ditches, roads, pipes and other buried materials as ceilings to travel from one location to another. HOA walls are a great example, as many will not actually see a gopher nor a gopher mound, but they notice their plants dying or see them pulled into the ground.
Both male and females have nests. They also have food storage areas, bathrooms and more. In the above image, this female gopher was putting away grass, clover and alfalfa.
The above image was at a park, the gopher had tunneled underneath the sidewalk, which then water was introduced when it started raining. Look to the opposite side of the image and you can see the gopher hole. A small amount of water will completely as away foundations, and flood communities quickly.
The above image is from Lowe's, where the gophers had been tunneling back and forth under the back wall and retainment area, into the flood control districts major flood canal, causing massive damages. Once a gopher weakens soil around pipes, or chews into them, complete failure will occur in hours if not minutes. I have seen many times, entire fields and sumps empty when a gopher tunnel eroded away. This is exactly the reason we tell everyone to NEVER use ANY water, especially when you live higher than others and near pools. While gophers cause lots of damage, humans using garden hoses are worse.
In the above image, we got a call from a woman that wasn't sure what she had in her garage. Note the small pile of dirt below the blue tape on the copper pipe. Once the wall was opened up, we filled 3 shop vacuums full of dirt and rocks. Traps were placed and the gophers were killed in a few hours.
We have taken many calls from pool owners. Their main complaint is that the cool decking is cracked, they're bills are high/losing water, or gopher mounds all around the pool and equipment. This is a good example of what happens. The den was created next to the leaf catcher, cracking appeared in the decking and the invisible cracking happened inside the leaf catcher walls. The ground was incredibly saturated and as you would walk, water would puddle around your shoes, not just next to the pool, but on the opposite side of the yard.
Here is another example of gophers dening next to a pool. This female created her den under the decking and along the cool wall of the pool. The plants gave her access to a food source and drip lines gave her an abundance of water. This female was pregnant at the time of trapping, there were also 16 young of varying ages also removed from her den, which proves that gophers are very social creatures, with other gophers.
This customer prior to contacting us was using a garden hose to try and flood out his gophers. The area he inserted the hose was in his front yard. His property was 5.5 acres. From insertion point to this sinkhole, both were at the borders and at the edges of the full 5.5 acres. In-between those two points were the home, garage, swimming pool and septic. All eventually were found to have suffered from loss of foundation stability and the owner ended up having to pay significant amounts of money in repairs. Additionally, his water bill was off the charts! All of the water that had been running through the gopher tunnels had exited into the nearby riverbed, neighbors tennis court, is children's playground and his other neighbors pool and basement, which suffered damages as well.
Never listen to anyone that recommends using water to kill gophers. It will never ever work and as soon as the water starts to dry out, gophers will immediately begin to tunnel again, leaving you with additional tunnels and damage.