My first gopher- #197!!

A couple of weeks ago I took over the gopher hunting chore at my parents' house. For those of you who don't know, the area where my parents live has a major infestation of pocket gophers. Mom and Dad have struggled for years to get the gophers on their property under control. They have tried everything, and last year they finally found a poison/trap combination that works. Since May 2007, they have 196 CONFIRMED deaths. I emphasize "confirmed" because there are probably many others that have been poisoned but not caught in traps. There is quite a process involved in this chore. You have to dig down into the tunnel, get poison in there, set the trap, recover the hole, check the traps, repeat... If the traps are empty but there aren't any new mounds nearby, then we assume the poison got the active gopher. Anyway, my gopher was #197- yes, we absolutely keep count. For every 50 gophers, there is a reward trip to Dairy Queen for blizzards. We just need 3 more for another blizzard trip!! I guess it's a little weird that we get excited about dead gophers, but they are a serious problem out here. So the hunt continues. Even Titus gets involved and has become quite the digger. I think he is as proud as I am about this first gopher- notice the smile on his face!