Essays

Wild On The Prairie: Mammals

Pocket gophers are important to the prairie
June 2, 2002

"A pocket gopher is coming! A pocket gopher is coming! Get the poison grain! Get the shotgun!" Panic has overtaken the caretakers of the Gone Native Arboretum. Seven hundred plus species of plants are threatened, and all three cats are curled up in the house, snoozing and oblivious.

The little pest is moving fast. Each little dirt mound that appears is nearer the gardens. This spring, momma is gonna have young and she is working hard. She spent last year on the far corner of the Cactus Patch in the Spectacle Pod Sandhills, and her network of tunnels, larders, birth rooms, and fecal rooms stretched one hundred and twenty feet.

This year she is headed our way, piling mounds of dirt at four- to five-foot intervals, crossing the gas pipeline at the edge of the reclaimed prairie, going over the crest of the "buena mujer” ridge. If she keeps coming, she will be under the Texas red oaks, cedar elms, single-leaf ashes and the big "palo duro" in no time. So far, she has dug two hundred and fifty feet of tunnel since the Good Friday rains. The soil from forty-five mounds would fill eight wheelbarrows.

The gopher rarely forages above ground, but is visible when she is pushing dirt out of the tunnel to form a new mound. Hawks, owls, and bobcats occasionally catch one during such brief appearances. Coyotes, foxes, and badgers dig up a few when the soil is soft. Pocket gophers are solitary, only meeting to mate. When spring comes males wander above ground looking for the female's fresh burrows. After nineteen days of gestation, three to ten young are born. Momma chases the young above ground as soon as they stop suckling.

With a wedge-shaped head, short tail, three big claws on each front foot and big, protruding upper and lower teeth, the ugly little creature eats the roots of plants. When everything is succulent and green, she pulls complete plants down into her tunnels. One of the most bizarre sights in the world is that of a foot-tall wildflower being pulled out of sight, inch by inch, jerkily tossing back and forth, abruptly disappearing, and finally leaving only a stray petal or two above ground.

Using her two deep, fur-lined external cheek pouches, the gopher transports loads of food to her larder rooms. Pocket gophers never drink. The tubers of mercury, hog potato, salsify, wild onion, blue penstemon, talinum, and chocolate daisy provide the moisture she needs.

About twenty years ago, several graduate students at Texas Tech studied pocket gophers and their tunnels. In a prairie, gophers are a necessary part of creating healthy soil, performing an earthworm's services on a grander scale. The tunnels are home to many commensal species of creatures. A pocket gopher rarely uses its entire tunnel network; so many species of arthropods take up residence, constructing their own smaller entrances. The students found beetles, crickets, centipedes, millipedes, ground-dwelling spiders, bumblebees, ground-dwelling wasps and bees, and more utilizing the pocket gopher's excavations. Pale white cave crickets with antennae twice as long as their bodies patrolled the tunnels. They seem to be the maids, nibbling at mold growths on the pocket gopher's excreta.

Like male pocket gophers, the females are born with a complete skeleton. By the time a female mates for the first time, however, her hip bones have been reabsorbed. When pregnant the creature would not be able to turn around in the tunnel if her haunches were bigger than her shoulders. Why the wee creature does not dig a bigger tunnel beyond its body size is a mystery that seems ludicrous.

The Texas Tech students designed an indoor tunnel complex, using Plexiglas tubing. They put it a room lit with red lights, so they could observe the gophers’ behavior. The Museum at Texas Tech sells a small brochure on the construction of pocket gopher habitats to zoos and other universities -- and to the general public, too. Be the first on your block to have the latest in exotic pets!

This story ends happily. (For us, that is -- not for the pocket gopher!) Mindy, our 14-pound male cat, caught the gopher. After enjoying a few bites of shoulder meat, he brought it to the kitchen garden and laid it carefully among the red and green leaves of the fancy leaf lettuce. Despite his wonderful attempt at nouvelle cuisine presentation, we politely refused his generous offer.