GOTCHA!!!!!
We got him! This is the saga of Gopher. It had been awhile since we had seen him last. I thought maybe he had moved on to greener backyards. Then on Saturday night I couldn't believe my eyes when a rather large tomato plant suddenly walked across the deck and disappeared!
Apparently he really likes tomato plants, not just the green tomatoes but the whole flipin' plant.
He's a pretty brave gopher and made repeated attempts to get the one remaining tomato plant. Finally Bf had to pick up the whole planter and put in on the table. While the two of us were outside trying to chase him off he would just sneak out from under another part of the deck and make a dash for the plant.
Now this was the last straw, he's eaten aster flowers, hollyhocks, blackberry plants and tomatoe plants. It was time for the Have-a heart trap. I got it out and baited it with some greens and a chunk of cucumber. Nothing happened that night so after discussing it the next morning we decided to get drastic. He's eating the whole backyard we reasoned, something has to be done. So it was time for the flood. For about 4 hours we ran the hose at various parts of the deck, hoping to flush him out.
Maybe the water will just make his home uncomfortable and he'll leave we thought. After this we were sitting in the family room watching tv when there was a clang and we saw that Mr Gopher had walked right into the trap.
This guy devoured nearly half a large cucumber within a few seconds. So the Bf and I ran out and took lots of pictures of the creature under the deck. He even got some vidoe of "the angry gopher" I'll try to put up here as soon as I can. It was while we were admiring him I began to think, well, he is kinda cute, certainly not like a rat and all though our original plan was to take him to a local park to release him the two of us stood there and talked about how cute he was.
I asked Bf, " okay what do we do now?"
"Ring his neck " he joked, after punching him I said " Isn't he cute?"
"Yeah, he replies, I kinda like him"
So we decided to leave him in the cage for a little while, with some lettuce and more cucumber and then release him ......... in the backyard. So ok yes, we're a couple of big softies. Or as Bf says
"Lucky for him I'm not a real gardner, otherwise he'd be toast"
It's a good thing hes cute and has some spunk, he didn't back down from 2 people oogling him in a cage and chattered his big teeth and snorted at us.

The problem is now what do about him eating everything out back. I guess there are already a myriad of tunnels under the deck since he wasn't even damp when we caught him after running the hose for hours. So it looks like there will be some sacrificial cucumbers and lettuce heads left out for him. He'll be our creature under the deck, kinda like Spot living under the stairs on the Munsters I guess!