Pest control

Pest control

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
In Idaho, gophers are an annual problem for landowners. On farms they can destroy acres of irrigated crops and in yards they can turn green grass into a field of dirt mounds and weeds. Bill Braddock takes on these pests. “It's a very busy season, everywhere we go, people have more gophers than they have seen in years. They have never seen a season for gophers like this. A lot of feed for them, a lot of warm weather. Whatever causes their reproductive cycle to cycle up, really seems to be working this year.” Braddock is after two pests, the gopher who leaves a mound of dirt… “Closes it off and you can see he has come up right here. Look for that little circle and then you start trying to figure out where he came up from and the way to do that is just to go back and see he came in right there. Give it about three minutes of gas and you’ve got yourself a dead gopher.” And then there is the vol who leaves an open hole. “A vol is a type of mouse, half as big as a gopher. They are a root user, grass eater. They are a real pestilence, they eat the roots off of your flowers and plants, the roots off your fruit trees, but they don’t dig deep holes like a gopher does.” Compressed carbon monoxide is produced by the machine your hearing and run to an aluminum probe that is inserted into the varmints hole. “We run it into the hole until we feel the probe go into the actual tunnel, it goes in at about 80 pounds per square inch, so we are shooting a high volume of gas in their and we shoot it in the hole for 3 to 4 minutes and we figure we get right at 80%.
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