Yesterday Sam and Ted each bought a gopher trap with some money they earned and got as a gift.
They plan to earn money by trapping gophers around here; the township will pay a trapper $2 per gopher trapped as they do a lot of damage to gravel roads. They also do a lot of damage to fields and to our garden. I pitched in some money for the traps so they can trap the gophers that are already leaving mounds in my garden plot.
Ted, a kindergartner, is learning multiplication, though he has no idea that's what it is. He was telling me "Mom, if I get 2 gophers, I'd get $4. If I get 4 gophers, I'd get $8!" and so on. He has dollar signs in his head! A country kid's dream.
This morning the neighbor man came over to show them how to dig out the gophers' holes and set the traps. Ron joined them for the lesson. He is fired up now too for this trapping operation, and dreaming of buying a dozen traps. A local farmer offered them extra cash for the gophers they trap out of his hay field.
The neighbor lady has a story about some gal that put herself through college by trapping gophers...she's been pulling out that story frequently lately...
I have some photos of the neighbor's lesson, but I am too lazy to get the camera and download them, so another time...
5 comments:
I used to love gopher trapping! It was big bucks for a little kid. And a good wholesome way to make money and learn responsibility at the same time. There was nothing like hauling that jar of gopher feet to the township meeting!
Wow. You had to bring in the feet? Then they divided by 4 to figure out how many gophers?
Only the back feet - cured in salt so they didn't smell. And they always took my word for how many were in the jar. : ) Trisha
You have to be careful where you keep the feet, one of the neighbor guys had a jar of feet, and the cat got into them. No feet = no money. I think he had about 50 pair at the time.
Lanny S
Bummer about losing 100 gopher feet. That would be 100 bucks. Hmmph. Those cats.
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