Getting good at gathering the backyard gopher

Another year, another gopher munching on my dear wife Karen’s hard work in the backyard garden of the Little Bitty in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood. Not to mention making beloved rescue dog Ellie B aka Dogamous Pyle’s life miserable again. Hey, wait. In finding the link above to share the last time I…

Operation Skunk Be Gone, so far, so …

I do not want to jinx it. The halogen light has been shining from the back porch for seven nights, flooding the area between the butterfly garden and the backyard shed, the space where our Syracuse city skunk shot its spray into Ellie B aka Dogamous Pyle at dusk eight days ago. Saturday and Sunday,…

The skunk makes us miss the days of the gopher

My dear wife Karen let out Ellie B in the backyard for a few minutes just when the sun was setting Monday night. I heard the bark, the frantic one, the I’ve-got-an-animal-bothering-me pitch. I heard Karen calling my name with an equal amount of panic. I smelled the hint of trouble as I saw my…

Bye gopher, don’t come back now, ya’ hear

Broccoli, cantaloupe and watermelon. The Syracuse-based animal control guy knew his gopher bait. Within three hours of our phone conversation today, our backyard nemesis wandered into our humane trap, and the June nightmare, the battle of wits, the terrorization of Ellie B aka Dogamous Pyle, was over. The furry was stuck inside the bars and…

We gotta get rid of this gopher now

All those cute and funny names you offered for the backyard gopher my dear wife Karen have been attempting to lure into our humane trap so I can drive it away to a better life? I refuse to call it by a single one of them. I’m in no mood for cute, nor funny. X%$&@?!%^#…

It’s time to name our teasing backyard gopher

The saga of the backyard gopher, Ellie B aka Dogamous Pyle and I continues. Call it Chapter Too Many. When my dear wife Karen and I returned from a full and satisfying day of activities on the first day of summer yesterday — a 3-year-old’s birthday party, our annual trip to the Parade of Homes…