Gophers Invade Los Alamitos, Infuriate Homeowners

It’s Caddyshack meets Los Alamitos, only with a lot more gophers.  

Since early June, an explosion in the city’s gopher population has turned local lawns into “minefields” of dirt mounds, residents say. The area behind the Los Alamitos Joint Forces Training Base has been particularly hard hit.

Sharon Durgin, who lives behind the base on Cherry Street near Farquhar Avenue, said the beady-eyed burrowers have trashed more than $5,000 in landscaping at her house.

“[My backyard] is getting totally ruined,” she said. “The gophers are very destructive.”

Many of Durgin's neighbors report similar woes.

To get rid of the varmints, residents have tried everything from poison pellets to gopherized whack-a-mole. The latter approach, Durgin said, was developed by a neighbor who ran a hose down one of the gopher's holes, then “clunked it on its head” when the animal popped up in another spot.

Los Alamitos officials said they've been deluged with complaints since June, but can't do anything about the problem.

“The city does not help with residential homes and parkways at all,” said Tony Brandyberry, public works superintendent.

Instead, the city refers callers to Animal Pest Management, a pest control company based in Chino that Los Alamitos hires to eradicate gophers from public land, such as Cottonwood Park.

Some residents blame the sudden influx of gophers on construction at the military base, where a new headquarters has been under way for about nine months.

But experts said the real cause is a boom in the gopher population. It's a natural phenomenon that occurs every few years, said Jim Green, a vector control investigator who has been working in pest control for more than 30 years.

“No one is to blame here; it’s Mother Nature,” Green said.

Unfortunately, gophers are loners, so as soon as the new babies can fend for themselves, they get the boot and look for homes of their own.

“Gophers like to live by themselves,” Green said. “They don’t like anything else in the burrow, not even their mate.”

So, after this spring's baby boom, new home construction in the Los Alamitos gopher market is off the charts. Sometimes, gophers dig networks of tunnels running 30 feet in length, which can wreak havoc on suburban lawns, Green said.

To fight back, Green recommends dropping traps into gopher burrows, because the animals resent having anything in their homes and will most likely meet their Maker trying to remove the devices.

Traps cost about $4 to $6 each and are reuseable, he said.

For more information, including extermination tips, visit http://www.ocvcd.org/nonvectors.php and click on “pocket gophers.”