Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 June 1895 — WHAT IS A GOPHER? [ARTICLE]

WHAT IS A GOPHER?

Rat, Squirrel, Snake or Turtle, According to Looatlon. “If you should ask a man from the Illinois prairies what a gopher was, he'd tell you it was a gray squirrel that burrowed in the ground/’ said a man who seemed to know what he wa» talking about. “If you should ask the same question of a man from the prairies further west, he’d tell you a gopher is a striped squirrel that lives in holes in tho ground. “A Missouri farmer would declare that a gopher was a mole-footed brown rat that digs its way under the surface in that State. A man from Georgia would probably surprise you by the assurance that a gopher was a snake, and the Florida native would unhesitatingly inform you that a gopher was a turtle. And the funny part of It is every one of them would be right. A gopher is a gray squirrel that burrows, a rat that burrows, a snake that doesn’t, and a turtle that does, according to the locality; but the most interesting of these is the burrowing turtle. “This turtle is peculiar to Florida, and is an important factor in the domestic economy of the cracker population, for the cracker* dotes on the gopher and thinks it is the finest thing in the edible line ever created. I don’t agree with the cracker, for I don’t like the company the gopher keeps in its character bf turtle, and I don’t see how anything can be good and habitually keep bad company. “Strange as it may seem this Florida turtle doesn't like the vicinity of water, but selects the high, dry, sandy ridges for its home. The gopher digs a deep hole and a long one in the ground, and remains there all the time it is not out grazing, for this turtle is a grazer, living on the wild grasses that abound in its vicinity. It is never happy, though, unless its burrow is shared by a colony of lizards and a cheerful family of rattlesnakes. “Find agopherholo in Florida and you will find from one to half a dozen rattlesnakes and twenty lizards of all sizes, colors and degrees of hideousness, occupying it with the builder and owner of the burrow. Tho gopher plainly loves this deadly association, although it is Itself as meek and harmless as a dove. No dweller in those parts of Florida where the gopher is found ever goes anywhere without a bag slung over his shoulder. This is to carry home gophers in, for he is pretty sure to find some of them pasturing. “The moment the gopher is surprised it shuts itself securely in its shell and the cracker tumbles it into his bag. The gophers are also trapped by digging a hole close to the entrance to the burrow and sinking a barrel or box into it. When the gopher comes out he tumbles into the trap and can’t get out. What terrapin are to the high-living epicure those gophers are to the Florida cracker.”