Gopher Quotes

Who am I? And how I wonder, will this story end? . . . My life? It is'nt easy to explain. It has not been the rip-roaring spectacular I fancied it woulf be, but neither have I burrowed around with the gophers. i suppose it has most resembled a bluechip stock: fairly stable, more ups and downs, and gradually tending over time. A good buy, a lucky buy, and I've learned that not everyone can say this about his life. But do not be misled. I am nothing special; of this I am sure. I am common man with common thought and I've led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me, and my name will soon be forgotten, but I've loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough. The romantics would call this a love story, the cynics would call it a tragedy. In my mind, it's a little bit of both, and no matter how you choose to view it in the end, it does not change the fact that involves a great deal of my life and the path I've chosen to follow. I have no complaints about the places it has taken me, enough complaints to fill a circus tent about other thins, maybe, but the path I've chosen has always been the right one, and I would'nt have had it any other way. Time, unfortunatley, does'nt make it easy to stay on course. The path is straight as ever, but now it is strewn with the rocks and gravel that accumulated over a lifetime . . . There is always a moment right before I begin to read the story when my mind churns, and I wonder, will it happen today? I don't know, for I never know beforehand, and deep down it really doesn't matter. It's the possibility that keeps me going, not the guarantee, a sort of wager on my part. And though you may call me a dreamer or a fool or any other thing, I believe that anything is possible. I realize that odds, and science, are againts me. But science is not the answer; this I know, this I have learned in my lifetime. And that leaves me with the belief that miracles, no matter how inexplicable or unbelievable, are real and can occur without regard to the natural order of things. So once again, just as I do ecery day, I begin to read the notebook aloud, so that she can hear it, in the hope that the miracle, that has come to dominate my life will once again prevail. And maybe, just maybe, it will.

If I said I wouldn’t toss him out of my bed for eating crackers, would you leave me alone? (Grace) Maybe. What else wouldn’t you toss him out of bed for? (Selena) Eating greasy grimy gopher guts? (Grace)

You, sir," I said, "have all the dignity of a badger with the clap. Shark shit has more fiber than you. I'm going to tie your nuts-first to a monkey's cage and make a mix tape of the resulting noise. Then I'm going to take a bag of marshmallows and a pair of granny panties and-"... ... He didn't want to know what I was going to do with those granny panties. Surprisingly, Granuaile did. "Sensei, what were you going to do with those marshmallows and panties?" she whispered as we walked together. "I mean, I'm sure it had to be dire, but it just didn't sound as threatening as the potential havoc a monkey could wreak on his sack." "There was more to that recipe," I admitted. "He cut me off before I could get to the Icy Hot and the gopher snake.

Screaming Morgan in a cop house is like yelling for an Oompa Loompa in a chocolate factory. You guys pop up like gophers. That's pretty much what dinner's like at our house, Kane acknowledged. Like a game of whack-a-mole.

Choking the gopher. What’d you think I’d do, my homework?

You have a funny way of showing how much you don't like me." "I don't like gophers, either, but I wouldn't leave one to suffer. I'd shoot it to put it out of its misery.

Now and again, one could detect in a childless woman of a certain age the various characteristics of all the children she had never issued. Her body was haunted by the ghost of souls who hadn't lived yet. Premature ghosts. Half-ghosts. X's without Y's. Y's without X's. They applied at her womb and were denied, but, meant for her and no one else, they wouldn't go away. Like tiny ectoplasmic gophers, they hunkered in her tear ducts. They shone through her sighs. Often to her chagrin, they would soften the voice she used in the marketplace. When she spilled wine, it was their playful antics that jostled the glass. They called out her name in the bath or when she passed real children in the street. The spirit babies were everywhere her companions, and everywhere they left her lonesome - yet they no more bore her resentment than a seed resents uneaten fruit. Like pet gnats, like phosphorescence, like sighs on a string, they would follow her into eternity.

I wouldn’t care whether it was a laboratory or a carnival. But it’s merely safe. Tell me, Mr. Pollock, what is the matter with Gopher Prairie?

Daddy always said keeping secrets was as stupid as keeping gophers. All

Toadstools The toadstools are starting to come up, circular and dry. Nothing will touch them, Gophers or chipmunks, wasps or swallows. They glow in the twilight like rooted will-o’-the-wisps. Nothing will touch them. As though little roundabouts from the bunched unburiable, Powers, dominions, As though orphans rode herd in the short grass, as though they had heard the call, They will always be with us, transcenders of the world. Someone will try to stick his beak into their otherworldly styrofoam. Someone may try to taste a taste of forever. For some it’s a refuge, for some a shady place to fall down. Grief is a floating barge-boat, who knows where it’s going to moor?

It seems to me possible, even probable, that many of the nonhuman undomesticated animals experience emotions unknown to us. What do the coyotes mean when they yodel at the moon? What are the dolphins trying so patiently to tell us? Precisely what did those two enraptured gopher snakes have in mind when they came gliding toward my eyes over the naked sandstone? If I had been as capable of trust as I am susceptible to fear I might have learned something new or some truth so very old we have all forgotten it. They

I woke up from a deep sleep to find everybody sleeping like lambs and the car parked God knows where, because I couldn't see out the steamy windows. I got out of the car. We were in the mountains: there was a heaven of sunrise, cool purple airs, red mountainsides, emerald pastures in valleys, dew, and transmuting clouds of gold; on the ground gopher holes, cactus, mesquite. It was time for me to drive on.

Gophers?’ Fox said. ‘You want to vaporise gophers with a railgun.’ ‘Well… less clean-up.’ ‘Damn.

If you can't pass on a little loving-kindness in this world, you might as well be a gopher in a hole.

As she went dragging through the prickly-hot street she reflected that a citizen of Gopher Prairie does not have jests-he has a jest.

gopher wood;

shelters desert bighorn sheep, pronghorn antelope, jackrabbits, pocket gophers, kangaroo rats, various lizards, and the ever-popular lesser long-nosed bat,

those befuddling networks of pedestrian subways that compel you to surface every few minutes like a gopher to see where you are.

gophers

I sat down in the middle of the garden, where snakes could scarcely approach unseen, and leaned my back against a warm yellow pumpkin. There were some ground-cherry bushes growing along the furrows, full of fruit. I turned back the papery triangular sheaths that protected the berries and ate a few. All about me giant grasshoppers, twice as big as any I had ever seen, were doing acrobatic feats among the dried vines. The gophers scurried up and down the ploughed ground. There in the sheltered draw-bottom the wind did not blow very hard, but I could hear it singing its humming tune up on the level, and I could see the tall grasses wave. The earth was warm under me, and warm as I crumbled it through my fingers. Queer little red bugs came out and moved in slow squadrons around me. Their backs were polished vermilion, with black spots. I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.

They was havin’ the time a their life, an’ same time you wouldn’ give a gopher for their chance.’’ Casy said, “Seems like that’s the way. Fella havin’ fun, he don’t give a damn; but a fella mean an’ lonely an’ old an’ disappointed—he’s scared of dyin’!

Sandy: Carl I want you to kill all the gophers on the golf course. Carl Spackler: Correct me if I'm wrong Sandy, but if I kill all the golfers they'll lock me up and throw away the key. Sandy: Not golfers, you great fool. Gophers. The little brown, furry rodents. Carl Spackler: We can do that. We don't even need a reason.

The railroad was more than a means of transportation to Gopher Prairie. It was a new god; a monster of steel limbs, oak ribs, flesh of gravel, and a stupendous hunger for freight; a deity created by man that he might keep himself respectful to Property, as elsewhere he had elevated and served as tribal gods the mines, cotton-mills, motor-factories, colleges, army.

Three hundred yards away, a mule deer that had already browsed its fill and been to water, rested in the shelter of a dry wash. Long-eared jack rabbits went about their various affairs. Gophers ventured a few yards from their dens, then squeaked and scurried back. A heavy-bodied rattlesnake, just emerged from its winter’s den, coiled near a clump of cholla cactus and waited for a pack rat to venture from its spiny nest.

Everyone remain calm,” Lucy whispered to her frightened classmates. “Trolls are incredibly stupid creatures—they’ve got sight like eyeless skunks, and hearing like earless rabbits. If we stay still and silent, they won’t even know we’re here.” The students and apprentices followed Lucy’s advice and stood as still as possible. “Actually, our vision is perfect and our hearing is flawless,” the chief growled. “Dang it,” Lucy muttered. “I was thinking of gophers.

Marian’s eyes absolutely blaze. To meet them is to have a shock of contact as if they were electrically charged. “Now you see? You wondered what was in whale’s milk. Don’t you know now? The same thing that’s in a mushroom spore so small you need a microscope to see it, or in gophers, or poison oak, or anything else we try to pave under or grub out, or poison. There isn’t good life and bad life, there’s only life. Think of the force down there, just telling things to get born!

I turned my back on Coyote without saying another word. He didn’t want to know what I was going to do with those granny panties. Surprisingly, Granuaile did. “Sensei, what were you going to do with those marshmallows and panties?” she whispered as we walked together. “I mean, I’m sure it had to be dire, but it just didn’t sound as threatening as the potential havoc a monkey could wreak on his sack.” “There was more to that recipe,” I admitted. “He cut me off before I could get to the Icy Hot and the gopher snake.” “Ew. What would you do with that?” “I will leave it to you as an exercise.” I

Thanksgiving List Prairie birds, the whistle of gophers, the wind blowing, the smell of grass and spicy earth, friends like Mad Dog, the cattle down in the river, water washing over their hooves, the sky so big, so full of shifting clouds, the cloud shadows creeping over the fields, Daddy’s smile, and his laugh, and his songs, Louise, food without dust, Daddy seeing to Ma’s piano, newly cleaned and tuned, the days when my hands don’t hurt at all, the thank-you note from Lucille in Moline, Kansas, the sound of rain, Daddy’s hole staying full of water as the windmill turns, the smell of green, of damp earth, of hope returning to our farm.

THE COUGHBALL of an owl is a packed lump of everything the bird can’t digest—bones, fur, teeth, claws, and nails. An owl tears apart its catch, gulps it down whole, and nourishes itself on blood and flesh. The residue, the undissolvable, fuses. In the small, light, solid pellet, the frail skull of a finch, femur of a mouse, cleft necklace of vertebrae, seed-fine teeth, gray gopher and rabbit fur. A perfect compression of being. What is the essence, the soul? my Jesuit teachers used to ask of their students. What is the irreducible? I answer, what the owl pukes. That is also the story—what is left after the events in all their juices and chaos are reduced to the essence. The story— all that time does not digest.

The Desert A weary eye may see endless wastes stretching beyond the horizon, but the trained eye sees a story hiding in every grain of sand. A coiling tower of Babel rises from a rattler's knots, their tongues forking in the shade of a gopher's den. Sounds of birds on mesquite trees mix with cricket chirps, displaced at night by a coyote's howl carried on wings of shifting sands. Listen closely and you'll hear her pup's plaintive whimpers until she returns. The desert sky becomes a festival of stars, entertaining an exclusive audience of sidewinders, Gila monsters, scorpions and horned toads. Sun rises over the blackened mountains greeted by a whip-tailed lizard who bobs its head, saying, 'this is my piece of paradise, keep out.' The desert is no empty place, but heaven's own retreat filled with amazing grace.

THE HEATHMAN IS NESTLED in the heart of downtown Portland. Its impressive brown stone edifice was completed just in time for the crash of the late 1920s. José, Travis, and I are traveling in my Beetle, and Kate is in her CLK, since we can’t all fit in my car. Travis is José’s friend and gopher, here to help out with the lighting. Kate has managed to acquire the use of a room at the Heathman free of charge for the morning in exchange for a credit in the article. When she explains at reception that we’re here to photograph Christian Grey, CEO, we are instantly upgraded to a suite. Just a regular-sized suite, however, as apparently Mr. Grey is already occupying the largest one in the building. An over-keen marketing executive shows us up to the suite—he’s terribly young and very nervous for some reason. I suspect Kate’s beauty and commanding manner disarm him, because he’s putty in her hands. The rooms are elegant, understated, and opulently furnished.

Noah and the Flood 9These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. 10And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. 11Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. 12And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. 13And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, [3] for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. 14Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. [4] Make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. 15This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark 300 cubits, [5] its breadth 50 cubits, and its height 30 cubits. 16Make a roof [6] for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above, and set the door of the ark in its side. Make it with lower, second, and third decks. 17For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die. 18But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. 19And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female. 20Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground, according to its kind, two of every sort shall come in to you to keep them alive. 21Also take with you every sort of food that is eaten, and store it up. It shall serve as food for you and for them.” 22Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.

There's something outrageously simple about extending yourself toward a goal the way a plant seeks the sun's rays or a gopher the crunch of easy soil beneath his paws, and then getting exactly what you want, sunshine or some prized tuber.

I’m a gopher. If I see something I want, I go for it, Orafoura said
. And I’m a shepherd. If I see a sheep I like, I fuck it, I replied. I mean I would, if I were sexually attracted to average Americans.

He calls these projects gophers, as in, go-for-the-money (don’t-deliver-the-project).

The King went. He had never been to the mine before. He had always intended to, but something had always come up. A ham sandwich. An unexpected visit from his Aunt Gertrude. Gophers pillaging the royal garden.

Baldur laughed. “I don’t think you understand just how alien these people are.” “They aren’t people, Sammis said.” “In my view, anything that thinks is a person.” I had to think about that. Didn’t flying gophers think a little? Where did you draw the line?

Methuselah had led the tribe as they grew of age. He patiently taught them the construction skills they needed to build the box. They had honed their talent by building elaborate village homes of wood that provided the added blessing of luxurious living. They found a peculiar tree of very hard wood in the valley they called “gopher wood.” It was a long process to cut down the trees and create long, cured and glued planks. The boards were then sealed with a prime coating of tree pitch. The pitch was made by bleeding the sap from pines, burning the pine wood into charcoal, grinding that to powder, and mixing that powder into large vats of boiling pine resin. They then painted the wood with the tree-made pitch to seal it with an initial coat.

That is the problem with not being able to depend on anything, you become afraid of everything -- even the best of intention.

That is the problem with not being able to depend on anything, you become afraid of everything -- even the best of intentions.

I am a nurse,” she retorted.  “I am not a gopher.” “You are a nurse,” the supervisor yelled, “and you are whatever you have to be to try to save lives!

Like any craft and tradition, hunting too can be shared and passed down generations. From the dawn of man to our own age, the hunting party is a well-worn staple of masculinity. All hunting parties will have roles and rough hierarchy set into them. There is the man who organized the party, the experienced hunters who guide others, some who entertain and cook, and the new hunters that are not just gophers but the next generation to lead future trips. The hunting party creates inside jokes, stories that can only be known by those who attend, and fosters familial bonds. In our culture of chaos,a hunting trip allows for quiet moments that few get anywhere else with friends or family.

Gophaaaaaaaaa-ok!!!!!!

We’re all going to be little brown gophers. We’ll all have to learn to dig down in the rubble and find the good things, because that’s where they’ll be.

But as time went on the gopher began to be a little impatient, for no female appeared. He sat in the entrance of his hole in the morning and made penetrating squeaks that are inaudible to the human ear but can be heard deep in the earth by other gophers. And still no female appeared. Finally in a sweat of impatience he went up across the track until he found another gopher hole. He squeaked provocatively in the entrance. He heard a rustling and smelled female and then out of the hole came an old battle-torn bull gopher who mauled and bit him so badly that he crept home and lay in his great chamber for three days recovering and he lost two toes from one front paw from that fight.

Thank God Ahab and Meshach were out of sight. He’d worked for Tarlander more than once and would surely have been recognized. “Was that who I think it was?” she asked Benjamin when he waited for her at a bridge crossing a wide creek. “Yessuh.” Benjamin shook his head. “Dat close.” He turned his horse. “Not far now.” They gathered in a small clearing bordering the creek, where Daniel awaited them. He was already gathering sticks for a fire. Jesselynn reached behind her to help a groggy Thaddeus climb up on the seat. “You been a mighty good boy. I’m right proud of you.” “Hungry?” He reached up and wrapped his arms around her neck. Burrowing into her chest like a little gopher, he repeated with more insistence. “Hungry. Want milk?” Jesselynn sighed. Where would they get milk Other fresh food too, for that matter. Her eyes felt as if they’d been rolling in the Sahara Desert, and her rear felt permanently glued to the hard seat. “I git some.” Benjamin remounted his horse. “You’d best take the mule, then,” Jesselynn said. “Oh.” He dismounted with a nod. “ ’Phelia, you got a jug?” Meshach unhitched the team and removed the harness from both horse and mule, then slipped a bridle with short reins on the mule. “You hurry.” After handing Benjamin a couple of their precious store of coins, Jesselynn climbed over the wagon wheel and, when her feet felt solid ground, leaned against the wheel until her knees no longer felt like buckling. She propped

Joad yawned and brought one hand back under his head. They were silent, and gradually the skittering life of the ground, of holes and burrows, of the brush, began again; the gophers moved, and the rabbits crept to green things, the mice scampered over clods, and the winged hunters moved soundlessly overhead.

That might be the story of Riverside. Tying to fit in with the big boys by accommodating their oversized posteriors. ... That's how we say it. We say, 'This is a horsey area.' ... That means go slow. We have feed stores and tack shops and desert, a really beautiful desert. It's the desert that has me here in 909. Technically, the Badlands is chaparral. The hills are filled with sage, wild mustard, fiddleheads and live oaks. Bobcats, meadowlarks, geckos, horned lizards, red tailed hawks, kestrels, coach whip snakes, king snakes, gopher snakes. Rattlesnakes and coyotes. We don't see rain for seven months of the year and when we do we often flood. In the spring, the hillsa re green. They are layered and gorgeous. This is in contrast to the rest of the year when the hills are brown and ochre and layered and gorgeous. ~ 909, Percival Everett

considered Wisconsin’s Scout Player of the Year thanks to weekly honors for his efforts in the practices leading up to the Badgers’ contests against Akron on August 30, 2008 (38-17 win); at Iowa on October 18, 2008 (38-16 loss); and when they hosted the Minnesota Gophers on November 15, 2008 (35-32 win). Even though he wasn’t making the main Badgers roster who played on Saturdays, Watt was still invited to watch film in the office of defensive coordinator Charlie Patridge after dinner every night. During an interview with ESPN – The Magazine’s Elizabeth Merrill, Watt

He politely introduced himself as Warren Baxter and told me he was about to turn in, he just had one more batch of gophers to stir-fry in his enameled wok.

We were in the mountains: there was a heaven of sunrise, cool purple airs, red mountainsides, emerald pastures in valleys, dew, and transmuting clouds of gold; on the ground gopher holes, cactus, mesquite. It was time for me to drive on.

Foreword I started playing around with the Web a long time ago — at least, it feels that way. The first versions of Mosaic had just showed up, Gopher and Wais were still hot technology, and I discovered an HTTP server program called Plexus. What was different

My current fantasy is to demand being referred to as, in both the first and the third persons, His Majesty–Your Majesty. Asked for further information, I could display the cold impenetrability of royalty and explain that I am a direct descendant of King David (who knows?), and the gophers around the table could, their choice, scream bullshit or go along with the gag. My daughter Clara says, “Dad, this is you at a business meeting: “Person A: ‘It’s an honor to meet you.’ “Me: ‘Then why don’t you go fuck yourself.

In his writing, capitals popped up in his sentences like lost gophers.

The grievous gopher demolished an entire three-foot pumpkin plant in one night.

I guess what I mean is that only Charlie could have stopped Bierman from ganging up on us, and only Charlie could have taken you on a road trip, and only Charlie could have made the Gophers think I was some kind of prize at 3d base even though I secretly stink, and only Charlie could have gotten Rachel to love you back. And he did all these things because he wanted to. So think about the happy times and when you start to cry anyway it's because you should. Charlie earned it.

A snake wriggled across the warm highway. Al zipped over and ran it down and came back to his own lane. “Gopher snake,’’ said Tom. “You oughtn’t to done that.’’ “I hate ’em,’’ said Al gaily. “Hate all kinds. Give me the stomach-quake.

There were words in excessiveness when we sat in church. All those thous and thees and manifestation. Now there's a doozy for you. I even knew when I was little that their words were falsely weighted, that god was not a bellower, but light as motes of dust, that there wasn't a definitive god but god spirits living in everything I saw around me. In the wind, the snow, the soft earthly curves of the prairie stretching ever eastward. The sound of crickets thrumming, the whistles of gophers in the warmish spring and the shrieks of redtails swirling high above me. The gods would never linger in pews stinking with selfish guilt, with all those wads of gum.

You have no idea what a cluster of gopher poo I dealt with last night. That's a new one, he muttered. Why was it bad?

Dr. Stadler felt certain that this small-time shyster had had as little to do with the Project as any of the movie-usher attendants, that he possessed neither the mind nor the initiative nor even the sufficient degree of malice to cause a new gopher trap to be brought into the world, that he, too, was only the pawn of a silent machine—a machine that had no center, no leader, no direction, a machine that had not been set in motion by Dr. Ferris or Wesley Mouch, or any of the cowed creatures in the grandstands, or any of the creatures behind the scenes—an impersonal, unthinking, unembodied machine, of which none was the driver and all were the pawns, each to the degree of his evil. Dr. Stadler gripped the edge of the bench: he felt a desire to leap to his feet and run.

though she did trip over a gopher hole near Stratton Audley.

No, he hasn’t got the brains God gave gophers.

But, Lillian,” he said softly, “I thought you had no concern for money or for any material rewards.” “You don’t understand! I’m not talking about money—I’m talking about poverty! Real, stinking, hall-bedroom poverty! That’s out of bounds for any civilized person! I—I too have to worry about food and rent?” He was watching her with a faint smile; for once, his soft, aging face seemed tightened into a look of wisdom, he was discovering the pleasure of full perception—in a reality which he could permit himself to perceive. “Jim, you’ve got to help me! My lawyer is powerless. I’ve spent the little I had, on him and on his investigators, friends and fixers—but all they could do for me was find out that they can do nothing. My lawyer gave me his final report this afternoon. He told me bluntly that I haven’t a chance. I don’t seem to know anyone who can help against a setup of this kind. I had counted on Bertram Scudder, but . . . well, you know what happened to Bertram. And that, too, was because I had tried to help you. You pulled yourself out of that one, Jim, you’re the only person who can pull me out now. You’ve got your gopher-hole pipe line straight up to the top. You can reach the big boys. Slip a word to your friends to slip a word to their friends. One word from Wesley would do it. Have them order that divorce decree to be refused. Just have it refused.

She was looking at him, her eyes dark with an odd, lifeless stillness; when she spoke, the motion of her lips was twisted by so evil a contempt that he did not dare identify it beyond knowing that it embraced them both; she said, “I know that you’d like to do it.” He felt no desire to pretend; oddly, for the first time, for this one chance, truth seemed much more pleasurable—truth, for once, serving his particular kind of enjoyment. “I think you know that it can’t be done,” he said. “Nobody does favors nowadays, if there’s nothing to gain in return. And the stakes are getting higher and higher. The gopher holes, as you called them, are so complex, so twisted and intertwisted that everybody has something on everybody else, and nobody dares move because he can’t tell who’ll crack which way or when. So he’ll move only when he has to, when the stakes are life or death—and that’s practically the only kind of stakes we’re playing for now. Well, what’s your private life to any of those boys? That you’d like to hold your husband—what’s in it for them, one way or another? And my personal stock-in-trade—well, there’s nothing I could offer them at the moment in exchange for trying to blast a whole court clique out of a highly profitable deal. Besides, right now, the top boys wouldn’t do it at any price.

When the folks first left, and the evening of the first day came, the hunting cats slouched in from the fields and mewed on the porch. And when no one came out, the cats crept through the open doors and walked mewing through the empty rooms. And then they went back to the fields and were wild cats from then on, hunting gophers and field mice, and sleeping in ditches in the daytime. When the night came, the bats, which had stopped at the doors for fear of light, swooped into the houses and sailed about through the empty rooms, and in a little while they stayed in dark room corners during the day, folded their wings high, and hung head-down among the rafters, and the smell of their droppings was in the empty houses. And the mice moved in and stored weed seeds in corners, in boxes in the backs of drawers in the kitchens. And weasels came in the hunt the mice, and the brown owls flew shrieking in and out again. Now there came a little shower. The weeds sprang up in front of the doorstep, where they had not been allowed, and grass grew up through the porch boards. The houses were vacant, and a vacant house falls quickly apart. Splits started up the sheathing from the rusted nails. A dust settled on the floors, and only mouse and weasel and cat tracks disturbed it. On a night the wind loosened a shingle and flipped it to the ground. The next wind pried into the whole where the shingle had been, lifted off three, and the next, a dozen. The midday sun burned through the hole and threw a glaring spot on the floor. The wild cats crept in from the fields at night, but they did not mew at the doorstep any more. They moved like shadows of a cloud across the moon, into the rooms to hunt the mice. And on windy nights the doors banged, and the ragged curtains fluttered in the broken windows.

You'd better watch out for gopher holes, Tory. That's a very high horse you are standing on.

They don’t shoot ground game in his neck of the woods and the last thing he wanted was a dog which would take off after a gopher or a squirrel. And he said that bum-punching quail over pointers was no more interesting than shooting clays down-the-line – the same going-away bird every time.

I could hear them yell and laugh each time and there was nothing I could do about it…. I saw them do it, like you’re shooting gophers. I could hear them: ‘Wow, I got one!’ Those guys were murderers.” Such

an assistant’s assistant’s walking-around-guy’s gopher’s peon’s underling slave.

Certain animal species who burrow into the Earth for places of solace or safety, or who inhabit the sheltering arches of caves alongside the spirits of the rocks, are the bridgers between these inner and outer levels of reality. Rabbits, gophers, moles, prairie dogs, wolves, and bears in hibernation all remember and recreate their rootedness in Mother Earth.

Gopher

Yes, and his name is Bandit,” she replies. “I mean, just look at that face.” She flashes me her phone screen over top of my laptop, showing me a video of a large gopher tortoise eating lettuce. “Ugh, the strong silent type and he’s health-conscious? Have I just met my soulmate?” I tease.

Reggie’s was more complicated, as nicknames sometimes are. His first nickname started from me and a couple of friends back in Bako making fun of his big cheeks and big teeth by calling him “Gopher.” He obviously didn’t like that, so we made up this word, “Gar,” and to us it meant “Gopher,” so that’s what we started calling him under our breath. But then he found out what that meant. He was kinda fat back then, so we added “-field” to the end of it and started calling him “Garfield,” like the overweight cartoon cat. Eventually, the “Gar” got dropped and we wound up calling him “Fieldy.