POCATELLO — On July 6, nearly a dozen dirt mounds began forming in the backyard of Fred Dykes’ home on Wayne Avenue, near Alameda Road in Pocatello.  

    The mounds are about a foot in diameter and six inches tall.

    “The piles of dirt conceal little tunnel entrances that run through my yard now,” Dykes said.

    Tunnels concealed by mounds, Dykes concluded, can only mean one thing — gophers.

    “I have lived at 946 Wayne for 48 years now,” he said, “and for the first time, gophers have invaded my yard.”

    Wayne used a small garden shovel on Friday to remove one of the dirt mounds contributing to the mini earthen obstacle course now visible from his kitchen window.

    But the tunnels and mounds in Dykes’ yard serve as a minor example of the havoc gophers can wreak on various forms of terrain.

    Authorities in Melba, Idaho, said Thursday that a woman died after her car fell into a sinkhole created by irrigation water running through gopher tunnels beneath the road.

    The Associated Press reported yesterday that a “section of roadway 15 feet wide and 40 feet long collapsed on Saturday, killing 32-year-old Sonia Lopez of Melba.”

    Finding a clear-cut method for getting rid of the animals has been difficult, Dykes said.

    “You never see them unless you’re up at night,” he said. “I’ve heard all kinds of ways to get rid of them — from sticking a hose down one of the holes to try to drown them out, to hooking a hose up to your car’s exhaust pipe and poisoning them.”

    Earlier this month, Dykes said he was excited when he discovered that the local U.S. Department of Agriculture’s bait mixing plant carried a poisonous mix specifically designed to rid peoples’ yards of gophers.

    “I used it on one hole,” he said, “but quickly learned that the bag says the mix shouldn’t be use in residential areas. I don’t want to get in trouble for using this in an area where I’m not supposed to, so I haven’t used it since.”

    Dykes said he also contacted the city officials to request assistance in ridding his yard of the animals.

    “Various calls to the city offices have failed to generate any significant interest or assistance,” he said.

    Mary Remer of the Pocatello Animal Shelter said gopher infestations are hard for city officials to handle, as well.

    “Trapping them is hard because their food type attracts a wide variety of animals, and their food supply is abundant,” she said.

    Like some forms of skunk traps, which kill the animals by drowning them, Remer said, traditional gopher traps are “a little more on the cruel side.”

    “We don’t have the resources to trap that kind of pest,” she said, adding that city officials’ efforts to track down and round up stray domestic animals sap a lot of time and much of the city budget designated for animal control.

    Remer suggested Dykes call a private pest removal company or contact Fish and Game.

    But Dykes said although the animal is a nuisance, he’s not extremely worried about the new critters pulsing through his back yard.

    “I’m not too upset about it,” he said. “I’ve always tried to not sweat the small stuff.”