awesome! totally awesome!

Bye Bye Gopher!

So...this afternoon I took Otis, Mckenzie and our neighbor Tony to the playground. We discovered a gopher digging a tunnel and sat around and watched. The kids wanted to touch it and/or shove the dirt back in the hole, but I told them what it was doing and how we should be nice and let it make the tunnel. We sat for a bit and then Tony's grandpa walked by and grabbed a stick and came over and laid the stick on the edge of the hole opening. Before the kids or I even knew what he was doing, he stabbed the gopher in the head when it popped his head up. We were all a bit shocked, but considering Tony's grandpa doesn't speak English we couldn't really communicate with him so we just watched and couldn't turn away. The gopher didn't die right away so he got another stick, pulled it out of the hole and then strangled it. It shook for a bit and then finally died. He then carried it over to the garden with us all following and buried it under a plant in his plot. He smiled and took Tony home with Otis, Mckenzie and I just standing there. Later, Tony's dad told me that it is an old superstition that if you see a gopher, you should kill it and bury it in your garden to scare others from eating your plants. Anyways, it was a pretty interesting experience! What a way to go!