As I engage in the annual summer battle with gophers in my garden, I thought it time to step back and appreciate this admirably successful little animal. Gophers are notoriously hard to trap, and no matter how many I catch, a never-ending supply of them moves right in through underground highways from adjoining fields. My best success was when I had a cat who was a master gopher hunter, but she has since retired. Now I must take a live-and-let-live approach, using wire baskets and screens until I find a new kitten taught the art by her mother.
Pocket gophers evolved into their niche through sophisticated strategies allowing them to flourish in almost any location and season. Wherever there are plant roots to survive on and soil to dig in, they thrive. Around here, they are abundant from ridgetop meadows to rolling grasslands to coastal sand dunes. Not to mention gardens. They prefer south-facing slopes that drain well and warm up during the day. Though their mounds and tunnel systems can look like a colony, gophers are extremely solitary. A single gopher territory might average about 30 feet in diameter.
In a productive area, gopher territories adjoin, but under the ground, each constantly patrols its boundaries, renewing its scent markers and fiercely attacking any intruders. They are so vigilant that when one gopher is predated and removed, a neighboring gopher will notice and annex the abandoned territory within 24 hours. All the attrition from relentless predation (or trapping) makes for a dynamic situation.
Prolific diggers, gophers have large muscles for their size, which is partly why they are favored by so many predators. (They are organic vegetarians, so their meat is also light and sweet like chicken—I’ve tried it!) They are one of the hardest-working species in the animal kingdom. Their bones, including the skull and jaws, are sturdy and have extra flares and flanges to which the big muscles attach, making skeletal parts you might find in an owl pellet or coyote scat easy to identify. Like other diggers, such as skunks and badgers, gophers have long, hard claws on their front feet, but gophers alone live fully underground, constantly digging new tunnels to access fresh plant roots. This requires an enormous amount of work with the back feet too, as they push large amounts of soil out of their tunnels into the surface mounds we commonly see. Their incisor teeth are orange on the outer surface due to high iron content in the enamel. This helps keep a sharp chisel edge for chewing through tough roots in abrasive soils.
Gophers foray above ground for fresh grass shoots around their hole, quickly disappearing back into the tunnel at the slightest alarm. While peeking out of their tunnel, they often reveal the feature they were named for: the fur-lined cheek pouches where they store their harvest of roots or grass to cache in underground chambers. When stuffed, these pouches are comically large, giving the gopher an undeniably endearing appearance.
Gophers commonly birth a spring litter of several young who disperse within a few weeks, and maybe another litter or two later in the year if conditions are favorable, such as on the coast. I have observed young dispersing any time from March to October. Their dispersal is a remarkably hidden aspect of their lives: When the young have grown, they leave the nest and travel overland under cover of night, navigating by smell until they find an unoccupied area to set up their own territory, sometimes re-occupying an abandoned tunnel system with the added benefits of food caches.
Gopher tracks are unique for a rodent, making it easy to identify and follow their dispersal trails. Like all tunneling animals, their legs are short, so the rear foot lands behind the front foot with each stride, leaving alternating pairs of tracks, bigger than mice tracks but smaller than rat or skunk tracks. I once followed a gopher trail more than half a mile from the exit hole to the new territory. The gopher crossed the sandy expanses in one long, unwavering trot, a remarkable journey for such a small animal.
To adapt to a wide variety of ground conditions, gophers use their mound-building skills in surprising ways. In some fields with heavy clay soil and poor drainage (but good grass crops), gophers deal with high winter water tables by taking their normal excavating habit a step further, creating massive mounds up to 24 inches high and 4 feet in diameter. These raised domes are more vulnerable to coyotes and badgers, but the clay in the soil helps by hardening the mound in dry months. Gophers have another strategy to deal with digging predators: They often build up mounds in the base of shrubs, making it difficult for a coyote or badger to dig them out.
In sand dunes, gophers use the root systems of lupines to stabilize their tunnels and chambers, while also employing a unique feeding strategy. They climb into the low branches and cut some down, then chop the lupine stems into short sections. They dry these pieces around the edges of the shrub and then take them underground to their caches. I have not found this habit reported in any literature on gophers, but I suspect it is an ancient strategy. Recently, I discovered them similarly cutting up sea rocket stems far out in open dunes (not bothering with the seed pods, which mice love).
Despite their ingenuity, pocket gophers are constant prey. Coyote pounce on them at their tunnel openings, badgers corner and catch them in cul-de-sacs or dig down to their nest chambers, and herons spear them. Gopher snakes slide into open tunnels and catch them below ground, red-tailed hawks drop down from the air and snag them, and bobcats pounce, plunge and hook them with their sharp toenails. Still, gophers thrive and persist as any gardener will attest. In our landscape, gopher is king!
Richard Vacha is a Point Reyes Station resident and the founder of the Point Reyes Tracking School and the Marin Tracking Club.