Come along with me and I will show you the best way to get rid of gophers. Hunting gophers will make you feel like the great hunters among our ancestors, the wild creatures who tamed the untamable vermin, who chased them across alien terrains into their holes and then drug them right out of their very homes.
We emerge from the safety of the known and streak across the fields, ears flapping in the wind. Take in the smells, the joy of running as fast as your four legs can carry you, each sound and odor an adventure. Feel the grass brush your belly as you leap and jump. Howl and bark and give voice to your freedom and then give into the hunt.
Sometimes you smell them first, sometimes you hear them burrowing just under the surface, sometimes you might even see one streaking across the grass in front of you. You have already struck terror into its heart and it knows it will soon face extermination. And you, you are to be feared.
The ground feels slightly spongy. It will mean the gopher will be able to dig quickly, but so can you, and your paws are ever so much bigger. We are designed perfectly to get rid of gophers. It is our calling, our destiny. Ah! You catch a whiff and stop dead in your tracks. Ever so still, we cock our heads this way and that way to pinpoint exactly where it’s gone to ground. Our every sense is quivering, searching.
Then, POUNCE. Forepaws furiously grind through the grass, weeds and dirt. We are a blur, a flurry of digging, and yet we are frustrated it’s just not fast enough, so we even use our mouths to pull up chunks of dirt or debris in our way. It cannot escape, it will not escape. It is just a matter of who can dig faster, us or the gopher.
We have been told we have sweet, deep dark puppy eyes, but not at this moment. Our eyes are full of fury, devotion to the hunt, hard. We are wild, crazy, but it is our insane pulling at the ground that will give us success. We shall get rid of the gopher.
We hear it moving back and forth, frantic to escape, but there are two of us and it is caught in one tunnel, can only go two ways. It is between us, underground, but it knows its end is near. We have dug deep enough that our snouts can reach in, teeth and tongue straining down the tiny tunnel, desperate to get at the creature. We are so, so close. Almost there!
Ball? Wheeee! Chase the ball! Chase the ball!