I have nothing against Parky, the City of Manteca’s Parks & Community Service mascot.
But assuming he is either a squirrel, chipmunk or some Frankenstein inspired creation that makes him at least a distant cousin of the gopher.
The city has just launched its annual offense in its never ending 100 Year War with the gophers.
The battlefields include all 77 city parks, the Tidewater Bikeway, and more landscape maintenance areas than you can carpet bomb with gopher smoke bombs.
The city doesn’t actually use gopher smoke bombs.
Nor do they disperse poison or a long list of “home remedies” from chewing gum to broken glass.
They play war by the gopher world’s equivalent of the Geneva Convention, namely the State of California.
The powers in Sacramento have decreed gophers must be killed au natural.
That means by traps.
It is why there are more orange safety cones in city parks these days than in 20 Caltrans work zones.
They warn you that you are in a gopher trap zone.
Gophers, if you’ve lived in Manteca through at least one spring, are capable of creating tunnel system that can convert an acre of ground into subterranean Swiss cheese in weeks.
The rodents can stuff more roots, lettuce, carrots - you name it - into their cheeks - than Joey Chestnut can jam hotdogs into his mouth on the Fourth of July.
It is one of the advantages that almond growers who flood irrigate their orchards have when it comes to pest control.
They get to drown gophers that, left unabated, can cull orchards of young trees just as effectively as lions chasing down a young zebra on the Serengeti.
To be honest, I thought gophers were some exotic creature before moving to Manteca in 1991.
I had gone 35 years without coming across one.
Living in an area like Lincoln in Placer County where the city is so plentiful that a clay roof tile and sewer pipe plant has been in business going on 152 years is the equivalent of Siberia in the gopher’s world.
Manteca, on the other hand, is like an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord on a luxury cruise.
The soft soil that is sandy loam is akin to gophers living 24/7 at a high-end Napa spa.
The house we bought on Pine Street was built in land that was once an almond orchard.
I didn’t realize we had gophers until plants ended up missing, rose bushes starting tilting over and wilting, and heads of lettuce in the veggie garden disappeared overnight.
My personal war with gophers didn’t start until a Sunday afternoon one mid-March morning.
I had seen plenty of telltale mounds but no gophers.
I should set the scene better.
This is back when I was officiating Manteca Recreation adult basketball games.
I was going to the East Union High gym a bit early.
I was dressed in the prerequisite black and white referee shirt, black pants, and black shoes. I had placed my whistle around my neck so I wouldn’t misplace it.
I pulled out of the driveway and was getting ready to turn onto the side street as our home was on the corner.
That’s when I saw it.
It was the unmistakable head of a gopher popping it’s head up from the ground of a massive Modesto ash tree.
I pulled over, got out, and did what any half crazed person who had been taunted for months by gophers — I grabbed a garden hose.
Anyone who has ever dealt with gophers knows how this ends.
You simply end up running a lot of water into the ground given what was below the surface was easily two decades of an extensive and well-crafted underworld of endless tunnels.
It would take it raining for 40 days and 40 nights to fill the tunnels to the brim.
I soon realized that, so I went around to a shed that was unlocked to get a weapon. The only thing that would work was an ax.
When I got back to the tree, I stood with my back to the corner.
It was there, after a minute or so, the gopher popped up its head.
I took a swing.
I missed.
Then he popped up his head again.
I started swinging like a madman.
It was then I got the feeling.
You know the one.
It’s when you can sense someone is starting at you.
I turned around.
Stopped in the middle of the intersection was a new BMW.
In the car were two couples dressed to the nines in their Sunday best.
All four were focused on me with a stunned look on their faces.
I’m sure I was a sight to see.
A slightly looking deranged man dresses as a basketball official swinging an ax above my head repeatedly slamming it into the ground at the base of a tree.
Later, I was to discover it was the pastor, his wife, and another couple.
His congregation has recently bought the former Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints meeting house on Pine Street to relocate their church from Oakland.
And I was one of their new neighbors.
Nothing says “welcome to Manteca” quite the same.
Over the years, my battle with gophers have led me to do a lot of insane things and for people to share equally crazy stories.
There was the guy on Garden Gate Drive who came home after work one evening, noticed a gopher hole in his back yard just off the patio, and then put a hose in it and turned the water on.
He feel to sleep, got up the next day, and went to work. When he returned home that night he stepped into his backyard and sunk nearly a foot.
He had left the water on. His yard almost completely collapsed.
That brings me to the morning I jogged back how and saw a strange car parked in front of the house.
As I reached, the porch an older man, with a slight shuffle, got out and called out “dog s - - - .”
I stopped in my tracks.
He then repeated himself.
When I didn’t reply, he asked if I was Dennis Wyatt.
I said yes. He then told me he was from Tracy.
A friend from Manteca shared how he read a column I wrote in the Bulletin about my trial and tribulations with gophers.
He drove all the way from Tracy to tell me stuffing dog droppings into tunnels entrances did the trick for him.
Gophers will do that to you.
Not only to do insane things but they drive you to share your war stories with complete strangers.
This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
