Good Bye Gophers, Hello Weasels-- the Surprise Crop of 2007.

OK, I admit it; I’m a gardening fool.  I have a 25-pound bag a week fertilizer habit. I reserve two hours a day for weeding, watering and cultivating and when one crop matures and is` harvested, I sit down and try to figure out what to do with the space in my garden that’s just opened up.

It’s June 2 and tonight’s dinner included two ears of fresh yellow corn a big salad, and barbecued hamburgers garnished with tomatoes, onions and lettuce I grew this year, in my two organic gardens on my little mountaintop.

I’m seriously committed to sustainable organic gardening and for the first time in the four years I’ve been down here. It’s really paying off.

The one problem I wrestle with, as an organic gardener, is pest control Last year my garden was all but wiped out by gophers and voles who were busy falling my ripe tomato plants like crazed clear cut loggers. Early in this year’s gardening season I decided I take a proactive position on pests. I captured two lizards in my rose garden and moved them into the garden. That took care of the Jerusalem crickets in short order. Since the two ‘zards moved in, I’ve not seen any evidence of horned worm or cricket damage; all thanks to two hungry little nine-inch alligator lizards. This week they were joined by a much larger (11-inch) adult alligator lizard making a sighting of one whitefly a rare thing.

Oh what about burrowing rodents? Last week I found one fresh hole on

the outside of the retaining wall adjacent the garden which I hit with two pounds of dry ice. On the same day I gassed the gophers, I also cut the weeds in my neighbor’s five-acre unimproved field. I regard any opportunity to use agricultural vehicles as a good thing, so I filled my iPod with about a gig’s worth of musica de los hermanos, Doobies y Allman, and spent two joyous hours driving Bambi Deere along the contours of my neighbors field. As I cut the section near the fence separating her field from my driveway up from the street, I heard a distinct chittering sound.

            So, I throttled Bambi back, and disengaged the PTO, letting the big blade cutting blade wind down and come to s stop in the dry dust of the field. I took a long pull of icy caffeine from my glass Coca Cola and turned my head to see if I could see or hear whatever animal had been scolding me for cutting too close to its Spring home. I mentally indexed potential sources of the chittering. Pissed off raccoon awakened from a morning siesta?

            Nope, the noise I heard was to high pitched and quieter than a raccoon. Then how about the cacao mistle I’ve seen around here. Same thing there, the noise was too quiet and much higher pitched than what a ringtail (aka a miners cat). Sounds like.  Also, I couldn’t smell a skunk through the dust and clean sweetness of fresh cut weeds.

            “Well,” I thought, “it will just remain a puzzlement”

I brought the rpm’s up on Bambi, slipped the clutch and brought the PTO and transmission back on line as I started another lap around the field, cutting a five-foot lane. In about 10 minutes I was back where I had heard the noise. I looked into the scrub oak when a flash of blonde, white and brown, stood upright and started scolding me loudly.

            “Holy Shit, a California long-tailed weasel!” I shouted to myself.

            In a life time of paying attention to wild things I’ve only seen wild weasels once before, up on the Iron Fork of the San Gabriel River, across from the southwestern slope of Mt. Baldy.

            Seeing the weasel standing up, I notice two little light brown heads pooping up on her left side. “Hot damn, weazes have taken up residence on my mountaintop.  Now that makes me smile, and helps me realize that Mother Nature will quickly move to fill a vacuum. And when she does, it’s sometimes with animals that make you smile because they run like crazed inch-worms, stand up tall, are sometimes blond with white points and dark marking on their face and around their eyes, and are completely at home, patrolling large fields and finding nutritious prey for the oh-so cite little kits.

            And here I thought the lack of gophers and voles in this year’s garden were because I had eliminated the bastards.

            But nooooooooooo! It’s because a mommy weasel is busy raising a brood close to a city, here on my little mountaintop in rural San Diego County. Weasels in my garden? Who would have thought? Jim Forbes on 06/02/2007.

A California Long Tailed Weasel like the one in my garden. (Photo courtesy of California Department of Fish and Game.)

Hello Weasel, Good Bye Gophers! Like totaly Cute predator, EH?