(Fwd) Re: Gophers vs. Moles

Forwarded on behalf of David who is between email addresses and
can't send to the list at the moment.

------- Forwarded message follows -------
Send reply to:  	"David King" <davidl.king@verizon.net>
From:           	"David King" <davidl.king@verizon.net>
To:             	<jhead@headfamily.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject:        	Re: Gophers vs. Moles
Date sent:      	Thu, 29 Aug 2002 08:17:36 -0700
Organization:   	A Rather Smallish Part of UCLA

Hi Joan....

Moles eat insects - worms.  They can be destructive, but they do
nothing to
a garden like a gopher, having lived - uh, gardened - with both; a
gopher is
a vegetarian.  On one memorable occasion, I was working in my garden
and
heard a rustling behind me to turn around and watch a prized artichoke
plant, about one meter high with a "wingspan" of about 2½ m, shaking
violently from root to shoot and then suddenly drop about 18" (½
meter?).
Rushing over, I found the entire plant was completely divorced from the
root
system at base of the plant - not a single root left.  Perhaps I am one of
the exciteable gardners, but I will admit to sitting in the garden the rest
of the day filing a killing edge to my spade.  He never re-appeared that
day, but "he" and I had many a run-in over the following 3 years.  In the
end, I am sure I had nothing to do with his demise, but I pin all
accolades
on an overly plumb tabby cat that seemed to have a relish for the
critters.

This was in a community garden - an allotment - that was on Los
Angeles city
property.  The top, flat part of the property, was a recreation  area -
baseball fields for youngsters.  The hill, running for a city block from the
baseball area down to the street was given over to gardens.  When the
garden
community would mount one of many campaigns to eradicate these
pests, the
wily pests would simply retreat back to the baseball area - thoroughly
frustrating our efforts; the baseball committee couldn't seem to generate
the passion we gardeners had and all such efforts ended in failure.
Tabby,
observing no such niceties of politics, was the perfect enemy to absolve
our
garden of the varmit.

david king













----- Original Message -----
From: <jhead@headfamily.freeserve.co.uk>
To: <medit-plants@ucdavis.edu>
Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2002 7:14 AM
Subject: Gophers


> Many thanks to those who have helped me out on this.  I was intrigued when
I first
> saw the word because it reminded me of my mother-in-law who used to goffer
the
> ruffs that the choir boys wore on Sundays.  The goffering iron created
beautiful
> frills, and had to be reheated on the stove at frequent intervals.  I have
since
> turned to the Oxford English Dictionary and see that the etymology of
goffer is
> gaufrer from the French and gaufre means a honeycomb.  And the OED  quotes
> Webster "gaufre was used by the French settlers in North America as a name
for
> various burrowing animals, and is a transferred use of gaufre honeycomb"=
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