they were so prolific and their holes so numerous that I could
not drive a horse through the orchard without danger of breaking one of
its legs. I also used poisoned grains and gases but I do not recommend
them. Trapping is the only method in which one obtains actual evidence
of elimination. It took me many years to force the gophers out of my
orchards and I still must set traps every fall, during September and
October when they are most active. Their habits are such that they do
most of their tunnelling in the early fall months, before frost, during
which time they expose and isolate the roots on which they intend to
feed during the winter months when the ground is so hard that they
cannot burrow further. This period is when they are most easily trapped.

It was with the idea of establishing a balance of nature against these
animals that I conceived the idea of importing bull snakes. Almost
everyone has heard of the bull snake, but its name is a poor one, for it
has the wrong connotation. These snakes are actually a fine friend to
the farmer since each snake accounts for the death of many rodents each
year. Their presence certainly was of definite value in decreasing the
number at my farm. Bull snakes have the long body typical of
constrictors, sometimes reaching a length of nearly six feet at
maturity, and being at the most an inch and one-half in diameter. This
country had a natural abundance of such snakes at one time but ignorance
and superstition have lessened their number so that it is now a rare
thing to find one. During the early days of automobiles, these huge bull
snakes, or gopher snakes, as I prefer to call them, would lie across the
sunny, dusty roads, and drivers of cars delighted in running them down.
Since they are very docile, they are the least afraid of man of any
members of the local snake family. They are slow in movement until they
sense the immediate presence of their natural food, which is live mice,
rats, gophers, squirrels, young rabbits, and sometimes, though rarely,
birds. Then it is they become alert, and the horny appendage on their
tails vibrates with a high-pitched, buzzing sound, simulating, although
not similar to, the sound of a poisonous rattlesnake.

When I first brought some of these snakes to my farm, I loosed them and
they wandered off to a neighbor's premises where they were promptly
found and killed. Later importations I confined to my basement, where I
built an artificial pool