Florence and Jane loved the coffee. It gave me the excuse I needed to investigate the finer points of gopher killin’. It was a great conversation. (Florence, who’s hearing aid was on the fritz and thus hadn’t responded to my yelling earlier, only caught every third word. This didn’t bother either of us.)
I found the whole thing folksy and quaint. Gopher killin’ for fun and profit reminds me of Tom Sawyer painting a fence. Even the usually dreaded specter of government intervention (the bounty) was OK with me. Instead of the local government pushing around people over the condition of their front lawn or the shade of paint on their garage, my local government has identified an agricultural “enemy” and is leveraging the power of the private sector to make it dead. That’s so old school and primitive it brings a tear of joy to my usually hateful eye.
Sing with me people: God bless America, Land that I love. Kill all the gophers. With traps and a truck!!
The business model, as I understand it, is twofold. The local government pays Florence and Jane so much per head and the local farmer matches that. (Holy crap, a public private partnership that doesn’t piss me off? I didn’t think it was possible.) I think Florence and Jane get about six dollars per gopher when you add up both income streams.
As for equipment, they had a battered F150, a bunch of traps, two hand trowels, some scraps of rebar (which I’d thought of as survey stakes), and very dirty hands. I gathered that their combined forces added up to about 100 traps and (aside from the truck) that was their total capital investment). In case you’re wondering, they indeed knew gopher biology like only professional gopher killers do. They told me all about the nuanced life of their adversary. (Though Florence summed it up nicely: “Actually they’re pretty dumb. We’ll get ‘em all by Tuesday.)
They had locations, counts of traps, and counts of confirmed kills carefully recorded in a dusty notebook. This was mostly to keep from forgetting where the traps were. (They probably are prowling dozens of fields for various farmers.) It seemed like each one had her traps. Presumably if Jane’s trap did the deed, Florence was SOL and vice versa. They were as egalitarian as field roving pirates.
They also had a bucket. A bucket of dead gophers!
They were peaceful ladies. They told me all about their grandkids, how they’d lived in this town forever, and who owned my farm three generations ago. I soaked it all up.
Some of it made me feel a bit melancholy. I’ve done a lot of things and been a lot of places. It changes you. I have no regrets but there is a sweetness to the life on the farm that I’ll never have. They knew more about the history of my backyard than I ever will.
I felt a fleeting bit of sadness for my deliberate and irreversible choices. I left untrod the simpler, more rooted, path that many rural folks take. When I was of age I left my parents (relieved but sad) in a plume of dust. It wasn’t the classiest exit. Nor, when visiting, have I ever again felt comfortable in my hometown. On the hour of my departure I burned a metaphorical bridge. Florence and Jane didn’t.
Florence and Jane belonged right where they were. I’m from everywhere and nowhere. As it always shall be for both of us.
A quick thinker would have offered them slightly more than the combined government/private bounty for about a half dozen dead gophers, and after they left would have proudly hauled them in to Momma and asked her to cook them up for lunch.
}:-]
Are you shittin’ me? I about burned up the entire morning’s “husband cred” angling to get a thermos of coffee. Showing up with a bloody bucket of gophers would not have helped. Plus… gophers? No way!
(On a related note: I try very hard to make sure “wild game” I bring home is more or less a fillet or steak or whatnot before I cross the threshold. Avoiding fish heads and bambi bits in the sink seems to help maintain domestic tranquility.)
When I was a kid my aunt came up with a pioneer era recipe called “field mice pie” and it was just exactly what you’d expect. She never tried it, for which I am grateful.
Well at least now we know who wears the pants in your family…
}:-]
Thanks AC. That’s good story tellin’ right there.
Whew! Glad to hear that. For a few days there I thought nobody liked it.
Of course everyone likes your story. Gophers are a kind of underground squirrel and they end up dead. What’s not to like? ( Rumor has it they are into Supertramp……just sayin)
If I see any gophers having kippers for breakfast I’m dozing the whole field.
Hmm. Supertramp
Epic Gopher VS Squirrel battle with Abba and Supertramp avatars
I’m betting on Supertramp. More electric guitars is never a bad thing.
Know what you mean about Everywhere and Nowhere. Did that bouncing stations in the military, and when you end up coming home, it isn’t really home anymore.
It’s a bittersweet feeling. On the one hand having been all over the place (at least in the US) and I have wider experiences and deeper understanding of various things than someone who’s lived their whole life in cornfield county or wherever. On the other hand I’ll never have the same feeling of community. I suspect it’ll make retirement (if I ever retire) a bit more lonely.
I always said of my hometown that it was a great place to grow up but also an excellent place to flee once you were out of high school. I stand by that.
We’re richer for it, but that is the trade off.
Goes double for my wife and I. Can’t have kids, but have two well paying jobs. we’ll be lonely in 40 years, in the mean time, we’ll LIVE.
https://youtu.be/CtIjGBV0X6k
Call it nostalgic, but I like the Judds. You can’t go home again.