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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (July 22, 2020)
Wednesday, July 22, 2020 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon Looking at this from Sue9s point of view, espe- cially after all the work she goes through keeping the green going, I can under- stand her annoyance when something gets into her grass 4 like a pocket gopher. Tales from a It isn9t just the grass they eat that gets Sue upset, it9s also the huge mess they make doing so. by Jim Anderson However, a soaring hawk 4 red-tail, Swanson9s, fer- ruginous or the like 4 will spot a gopher mound a mile away (literally) and come My wife, Sue, keeps a sailing along watching for small lawn in the backyard the animal to come to the of our residence at Sun surface. Mountain. She believes a One thing that brings a lawn is a wonderful place gopher to the surface is the for grandchildren to play. condition of their residence. To keep it healthy, she irri- If the hole gets plugged the gates, fertilizes and trims gopher has to open it quickly it and becomes very upset to keep air circulating in when one of Nature9s chil- their home. dren decides to come and Most times a hawk, live in it. owl or coyote will snatch a One of the reasons I tol- gopher out of its hole when erate lawns is they are mag- it comes to the surface, and nificent places for dandeli- that9s that. ons and worms to grow and Be that as it may, those for a variety of insects to lay mounds are particularly eggs which hatch, eat the annoying to Sue, so when grass roots and then meta- one appears she gets out her morphose into food for other gopher traps and the poor members of the biomass of things are soon food for our back yard. Also, bees, Gary Landers9 raptors at his and just about any pollinator rehab facility in Sisters. you can think of, just love It took two days, but her dandelions. recent efforts bore fruit when she saw the trap triggered in her daily, early morn- ing inspections of her gardens and lawn. As she started for the house to show me the suc- cess of her trap- ping efforts I could see the look of consternation on her face. It didn9t change as she said, <I caught the 8gopher9 but I PHOTO BY JIM ANDERSON don9t think it is. Sagebrush vole. Look at this&,= Sisters Naturalist Of moles and voles and she poked it under my nose. I took one look at the size of the animal, color of the fur, pointed nose, and said, <You9re right that9s not a gopher, it looks more like a mole.= And by golly, that9s what it9s turned out to be. At first, I thought it was a shrew mole, but size, fur, length of tail and larger-than-life front feet didn9t fit, so I searched through our old friend, Wikipedia, and it turned it into the broad-footed mole pictured above; my first time to ever see one. How about you&? And then there9s the our native voles. Boy, can they make a nuisance of them- selves! In 1958, I had the wonderful experience of being in the community of Alfalfa, east of Bend, every Thursday evening for pinochle and pie at the Grover Place. In those days there was no such thing as irrigation pivots for hay fields, it was flood irrigation where water was sent from canals then to ditches out to do the job. One Thursday evening, just after dark, Johnny Grover announced he had to go out and <change the water,= and have another piece of pie and pinochle when he got back, and I went along with him. As we were walking down the lateral between the fields I kept feeling something scrunch under my feet and wondered what in the world I was stepping on. Johnny whipped out his flashlight and shined it on the surface and, lo-and-behold, I was stepping on adult voles scampering about. When Johnny turned the water into the field it was astonishing to see a sea of fur in the moonlight moving in front of the water, uncount- able numbers of voles trying to stay dry. FIREWOOD SALES — Kindling — — — SISTERS FOREST PRODUCTS 541-410-4509 MEAT S, GAME ALASKAN SEAFOOD CHEESES SANDWICHES BEER, WINE, CIDER SistersForestProducts.com 110 S. SPRUCE ST. | 541-719-1186 OPEN FOR DINE-IN & TAKEOUT r e m m u s r u o y l l a For t h g i r s d e e n t c e j o r p here in Sisters! Phone orders for coffee, pastries, and boxed lunch. Monday-Saturday 7 a.m.-4 p.m. 541-588-0311 201 E. Sun Ranch Dr. When they baled the hay in the dark of night, the coyotes would follow the baler, gob- bling up voles hiding under the ay. windrow of hay. he Then, when the coyotes were full they9d puke up ile the voles in a pile and go out for m. more of them. The next day ravens would come by and pig out on the piles of voles. PHOTO BY SUE ANDERSON T h e m o s t My first look at the broad-footed mole, Scapanus amazing thing latimanus. Perhaps yours as well. was that those same species of voles were and jackrabbits, the next in such numbers in the year there wasn9t a vole to Klamath country that they be found, which is what had actually put a few cattle we9re seeing this year in ranchers out of business. The the jackrabbits popula- voles were eating the grass tions 4 and golden eagles and other forage in such a r e s u ff e r i n g b e c a u s e quantities there was nothing of it. Ahhh, the nature of our left for the cows. 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