Vermin wreak havoc on golf courses, gardens

By Sam Richards

Staff writer

 

A seemingly booming population of vermin on Rossmoor’s gardens and golf courses has been keeping a golf course crew member and a “gopher wrangler” business busy as summer moves into full swing.

“It’s been a banner year for gophers,” said GRF Board member Ted Bentley, commiserating with Golf Director Mark Heptig at the June 14 Golf Advisory Committee meeting. “This is the worst year for gophers in a long time.”

Gophers, ground squirrels, moles and other similar little animals cause damage on several fronts. Their burrow holes can damage turf and create a tripping hazard, and their holes and tunnels can undermine dry hillsides, and cause erosion.

“The populations, especially coming off the hill at (holes) 3, 4 and 5, are just huge,” Heptig said at the meeting.

And depending on the species of animal and the type of plants, these critters can cause mayhem in a garden – which is why the Garden Club hired what Bentley referred to as a “gopher wrangler.”

Garden Club President Barbara Wightman said the problem was serious enough this year that the club in April hired Got Gophers, a San Jose-based business, to do what it could to the pests causing havoc in their 5-acre garden on the north edge of Rossmoor.

“We had had enough … We watched them poke their heads out of the ground while they created their tunnel exits, and we saw our plants wiggle and then disappear in front of us,” Wightman said.

The initial set-up was expensive, she said, and the Garden Club pays $225 per month for ongoing service, which generally involves a man coming every week or two to check traps and set new ones, Wightman said.

“It was either that or have our members go crazy,” she said.

While Wightman said no one is complaining about gophers anymore, there is a new nemesis – voles, which she said resemble mice with short tails.

“They don’t stay underground like gophers do – no, they have tunnels so they can eat roots,” she said. “But, unlike gophers, (voles are) happy to come out into the daylight, climb up and into a raised bed, chomp at celery or parsley or whatever, and then scamper between the feet of the shocked and very sad gardener and into their tiny little hole.” One club gardener, Wightman said, described seeing a “causeway of voles,” unfazed at the presence of humans.

Ground squirrels also make frequent appearances above ground, in addition to making holes and tunnels.

The little burrowing moles, Wightman said, don’t pose a threat to garden produce, but can also undermine hillsides and make holes.

Heptig said that one member of the golf course maintenance crew has been tasked with catching as many of the little pests as he can. He bagged 11 of them one recent day, Heptig said.

Two years ago, Heptig said, the golf course had hired outside help to kill as many “vertebrate pests” as possible. But that person has since retired, and that extermination work has since been assumed by GRF golf staff. But given that the golf maintenance staff is a few people down thanks to illness and other factors, “the work to do that will likely take away from something else.”

Wightman said she detests killing any animal, even those that harm the garden. She recommends using deterrents — garlic, mint and castor oil – whenever possible to ward off voles, but “the problem is, unless everyone uses these methods, the voles will just go to the next unprotected garden.” She also said Garden Club volunteers have also used Havahart traps to catch and relocate approximately 60 ground squirrels.