The day I realized Bill Murray wasn’t acting in “Caddyshack” was on a warm spring Sunday afternoon 31 years ago.

I was dressed in a black slacks, black shoes, and a traditional black and white stripped referee shirt. I had also slipped the whistle around my neck so I wouldn’t lose it.

I was headed to officiate a Manteca Recreation adult basketball game at the East Union high small gym. For some reason, I decided to go a bit earlier than I needed.

I had pulled out of the driveway and was turning the corner when I caught something out of the corner of my eye.
It looked as if something was popping up around the base of the massive mistletoe tree in our front yard that — for those unschooled in what it is really called — was a Modesto ash.

I stopped mid-turn.

I saw “it” disappear and then pop up again.

I backed the car up and darted to the tree.

It was there I had my first fateful encounter with a creature that I’m convinced has no earthly reason to exist — a gopher.

Like a naive idiot, a grabbed a hose, stuck it in the hole, and turned the water on.

I say that because in the ensuing weeks and months I’d discover our corner lot had more gopher tunnels that had transformed the area several feet below the dirt and grass into Swiss cheese.

Ed Pine and Antone Raymus in the early 1950s had built what back then passed as custom homes in what they called Lincoln Estates in a former almond orchard in what was the edge of town at the time.

I clearly needed something to kill the gopher with before the half dozen small mounds of dirt next to an equal number of holes near the tree’s base multiplied further.

I headed into the backyard without my keys.

That meant I could not be into the metal shed where most of the tools including shovels were at so I opened the door to the small room where the water well tank was located.

There was a crowbar as well as an ax inside. I took the ax.

I rushed back to the front yard.

And with my back to the corner of the intersection of Pine Street and Raylow Avenue, I started swinging away like a madman with an ax every time the gopher popped its head up.

Did I mention I had created a dirt mound on the corner and planted it with low shrubs and ivy after years of frustration with people walking over the grass killing it and letting their dogs do the No. 2 there on almost a daily basis?

This is an important detail.

After a few minutes, I had a feeling that someone was watching me.

I turned around with ax in hand and saw a BMW had stopped in the middle of the intersection.

Inside were four adults dressed in their Sunday best with their mouths hanging open and eyes as big as saucers.

It was the pastor of the church that had just moved into the former Mormon meeting house down the street along with his wife and another couple.

Given they obviously couldn’t see the gopher popping up its head from their vantage point, what they saw was a half crazed man dressed as a basketball referee swinging an ax from above his head in his front yard on an otherwise pleasant Sunday afternoon.

And people claim I can’t make a good, lasting first impression.

That was a start of what I call my 99 Month Gopher War.

During the next eight years and three months I learned more than I ever wanted to about gophers.

Such information ran the gamut from gophers can’t pass gas — a fact that inspired specific poisons — to there was an optimum time of day to whack away at gophers popping their heads up.

I’ve used anti-gopher sonar devices — save your money — and gopher plants that are supposed to repel them. In my case, they made a snack of them.

I’ve also deployed every type of gopher trap.

I’ve even used Juicy Fruit Gum untouched by human hands that supposedly chokes them to death.

What I didn’t use was broken glass or employ canine droppings.

I found out about that kill option and accompanying deterrent one morning as I jogged back from the gym. In front of the house waiting for me was an elderly gentleman who kind of shuffled toward me as I came to a stop.

The conversation went word for word with what you are about to read.

HIM: “Dog s - - -.”

ME” “Excuse me?”

HIM: “Dog s - - -.”

At this point I admit I stepped back a bit.

HIM: “Aren’t you the Dennis Wyatt guy that writes for the Bulletin?”

Against my better judgment I said I was.

HIM: “I read about your gopher problems. I put dog s - - - in the holes and toss broken glass into the tunnels to kill gophers at my rental in Tracy.”

I never did try either suggestion.

Given the amount of gopher tunnels I had, an exterminator convinced me to allow his crew to dispose of his supply of gopher poison he used at various schools he had contracts with that was no longer legal to use.

That’s because the EPA was concerned some kid might nibble on a gopher after it kicked the bucket.

On one side of the yard along Raylow, the pest control guy estimated there were at least three dozen tunnels.

It was clear animal droppings wouldn’t work as I’d likely need elephant dung collected during a week-long circus to get the job done.

As for the broken glass, I was more likely than a gopher to be cut from it working in the yard given the amount of digging I did to keep changing things around.

Over the years, I killed a dozen gophers while my Dalmatians — as opposed to cats — finished off another five.

I harbored no guilt given the damage they did to countless plants, bulbs, rose bushes, vegetables, and more at my version of a gopher all-you-can-eat Hometown Buffet.

You can understand why I was beside myself when I found out a neighbor, Tim Bowers, had caught a gopher. He couldn’t bring himself to kill it so he released it in the alley.

My thought at the time was “next time give me a call.”

I wasn’t alone in my obsession with killing gophers.

After I penned a column about my gopher trials and tribulations, I got a call from the late Antone Raymus.

Antone at one point could proudly say 25 percent of the families in Manteca were living in was a Raymus built home.

It turns out he had a same exact gopher experience I did with a slight twist.

I was trying to dig up the root ball of an olive tree when a gopher caught my attention. I started a hose down the tunnel and turned on the water.

In his case, it was simply a gopher mound that popped up near his tennis court.

After letting the water run for a good half hour, I went to pull the hose out but couldn’t no matter how had I tried as the water had caused the sandy loam soil to collapse. I gave up after about 15 minutes and went and grabbed a knife.

I was about to cut it off when my better half came into the backyard and wanted to know what I was doing.

When I explained what had happened, she said I shouldn’t destroy a $25 hose.

Antone said his wife Marie came across him about to do the same thing.

She made similar references about how much the hose cost and that he should dig it out instead.

Both of us — years and miles apart -— went about digging with neither one of us being happy campers.

When our spouses checked on us later they basically had the same “what the hell are you doing” reaction.

They then told us to cut the hoses and fill up the hole.

My eight square foot hole had doubled in size and I still was unable to free the hose.

In his case, Antone said he also dug his original hole much bigger — so much that he could drop a chaise lounge into it — without any success of pulling the hose free.

People would also come up to me in stores and share their gopher war stories.

Once I was stopped in the Orchard Supply Hardware on Louise Avenue where Ace Hardware is today.

It was a stranger who recognized my face from the photo that goes with my column.

He said he had been waiting for months the chance to cross my path.

His story was about a friend who was an engineer at Livermore Lab who was going nuts fighting gophers at his home on a hillside in the Tri-Valley area.

The friend used everything from gopher bombs to even a “Rodenator” from a farmer acquaintance.

The “Rodenator” shoots an ignited combination of propane and oxygen into tunnels created by squirrels, gophers, and badgers.

That had limited success at turning the tide.

One day in an apparent fit of rage after being able to stop the gophers from coming back, he bought bags of cement and rented a cement mixer and filled in the holes.

A few days later, the gophers popped up elsewhere, by creating new tunnels to reach the surface.

Perhaps the most enduring story shared with me was by a man named Jack who was working as a mechanic at the time at Delicato Vineyards.

One Friday morning as he was getting ready to go to work, a gopher popped up in his back yard west of the Shasta Park neighborhood.

He went outside, grabbed a hose, turned it on full blast, and stuck it down the gopher hole.

Jack intended to turn it off before he left for work 20 minutes later.

One problem: He forgot to do it.

He ended up working overtime and came home beat. He ate dinner and went straight to bed.

He woke up about 10 a.m. Saturday, looked into the backyard and realized he had left the water on.

Two steps off the cement pad that served as his patio, he sunk into the grass past his ankles.

The combination of Manteca’s sandy loam soil and running water full blast for 29 hours, caused much of his backyard to collapse.

Adding salt to the wound, his water bill for the month was sky high.

I did learn one thing positive from my gopher encounters. They bring people together to swap gopher war stories.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com