Spray, gophers, bird, garden, flat tire

Thursday I sprayed the weeds in the NE pasture. Not that they were bad in the NE pasture as I sprayed and sprayed that pasture last year. This time it took me only three tanks of herbicide to spray the entire pasture. It may sound like a lot but it is much less than last year. Still it took me almost 4 hours of walking and spraying to complete the job.

Even though I have plenty of pasture and weeds left to spray, it feels good to have another section done.

Near the end of my spraying, at the west fence line, I found four new gopher holes. *argh!* I've never had gophers in this area. I got a conibear and a leg hold trap and set them in two holes and covered the other two holes. I'm gonna nip this in the bud before they excavate an entire complex.

I also found a gopher complex I had cleared in the north pasture had half its holes reopened after a week or two of it being cleared of gophers. Man, it never ends.

It has been annoying gopher day. No pocket gophers caught, but half of them had dirt in the traps. In another regular gopher leg hold trap I had caught a bird. It appeared to be a flicker. Why the bird went in the trap I have no clue. The trap was set near a tree trunk in the entrance to a gopher hole. Why a bird stepped there is a mystery.

It was tricky, but I was able to release the bird without getting pecked. Still, it is not good as I believe its leg is damaged. It didn't fly off. Instead it flopped along the ground and away from me. I moved away from the bird to not further agitate it. I could hear another bird in a tree call to this one.

Then I found another one of my leg hold traps missing. The post that held the trap was laying on the ground a yard or two from the hole. *sigh* Since the hawks haven't been around to feast on the gophers, I have a feeling this gopher was one of the larger ones and with its free three legs was able to pull the trap hard enough to topple the post. I have a feeling I hadn't pushed the post into the ground deep enough as the ground was hard and the mosquitoes were eating me alive when I set the trap.

My only hope is that trap is still large enough that the gopher couldn't get back down a hole. I looked around but could not see anything in the grass and weeds. I will be spraying this area sooner than later and hopefully will come across the trap. Dang. I just found this trap after who knows how long, and a week later I lose it again.

I also weeded 80% of my garden before the mosquitoes forced me to quit. My garden is in sad shape. This is the worse garden I ever had. It seems as if only 10% of what I planted has come up.

Continuing my day's downward spiral I went for a short bicycle ride and got a flat tire. It was a mile walk home. At least the mosquitoes left me alone during my walk.