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Michael Yakubinis, a program assistant in the Real Property Management Department of Clark County, puts away the Rodenator after blowing up a gopher hole Monday in Sunset Park.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010 | 2 a.m.
Rodenator: Boom! Goodbye Gophers
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The gopher infestation - and subsequent bitings and twisted ankles - at Sunset Park in Henderson has led to some drastic measures. Four to five days a week, a park maintenance worker hunts the fields for gopher holes, armed with the newest in humane gopher-killing weaponry: the Rodenator. See it in action in this video: when a worker finds a fresh mound, he uses the long rod of the Rodenator to pump propane into the gopher's burrow, and then "boom!," the gophers have been euthanized.
A gopher peaks his head out of his hole Tuesday in Sunset Park. Park workers have been using a device called the Rodenator to kill the gophers.
The problem
Pocket gophers are a longtime nuisance at Sunset Park, pockmarking the landscape with holes and attacking curious visitors.The solution
After targeting the gopher population with traps and poison, Clark County began using the Rodenator in 2005. The device sets off explosions in gopher burrows.Beyond the Sun
Steve Sisolak
Map of Sunset Park
Sunset Park
2601 E Sunset Road, Las Vegas
“To kill, you must know your enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint. And a varmint will never quit — ever. They’re like the Viet Cong — Varmint Cong. So you have to fall back on superior intelligence and superior firepower.”
— Groundskeeper Carl Spackler (Bill Murray) in “Caddyshack”
Clark County officials say they may finally be winning their long-running war against gophers in Sunset Park.
For decades, pocket gophers have pockmarked the park. Countless ankles have been twisted in their holes, and gnawed wiring at the park had to be repeatedly replaced. The gophers were driving parks maintenance people crazy — and driving people away from the sports fields, county officials say.
Kevin Parker, county park manager, says he has seen gophers standing on their hind legs in an attempt to bite county workers. Children bitten by the rodents had to get preventive rabies shots, he says.
County Commissioner Steve Sisolak, whose district includes Sunset Park, says he was told “kids had been bitten when they stuck their hands in the holes.”
All of that is why five years ago the county resorted to the groundskeeper’s version of the nuclear option, the Rodenator.
County park maintenance crews own four of the metal lance-like devices, which cost $1,900 to $2,700 each. They use them to set off oxygen-propane explosions in the gopher burrows. Each Rodenator uses about five to seven gallons of propane per week, which adds up to 300 to 400 gallons a year.
Visitors to the parks on most mornings are liable to hear a warning of “Fire in the hole!” called out before a muffled boom. If they’re close enough, they will feel the ground shiver beneath their feet.
The device sends a concussive shock wave through a gopher burrow at the rate of 5,000 feet per second, according to its manufacturer.
The company’s website shows flames shooting out of the escape-end of an ignited gopher hole.
That’s part of the reason why the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sent a complaint letter to Clark County about the use of the Rodenator a couple of years ago. A PETA cruelty caseworker wrote that it had gotten complaints from people that “Sunset Park officials are intentionally blasting gopher holes with explosives while the animals are still inside.”
“If these allegations are accurate,” it went on, “we have grave concerns for the welfare of gophers and other animals in the vicinity of Sunset Park.”
Steven Corry, Clark County Parks and Recreation assistant director, says the county has fielded only four or five complaints from park users since the county started using the Rodenator in 2005.
When the county got the PETA letter in November 2008, it stopped using the Rodenator for about 30 days while exchanging e-mails with the animal rights group about other ways to deal with the gopher infestation. How about carbon monoxide poisoning? PETA counteroffered.
Unable to satisfy PETA, the county resumed Rodenation in December 2008 — and has been blasting away, four to five days a week, ever since.
Corry says PETA’s suggested methods “have not been shown to be more humane.”
County officials note that the American Veterinary Medical Association classifies death by concussion as “a humane death.”
“Most public agencies ... utilize traps or poison that are not humane and were discontinued by Clark County when the propane/oxygen method was initiated,” Corry says.
PETA contends the Rodenator can burn and suffocate animals and crush their bones. The organization suggests gophers be humanely evicted from burrows with mothballs, ammonia-soaked rags or peppermint oil-soaked cotton balls.
The problem with that approach is it only moves them to another part of the park.
Sisolak equates the gophers to rats — and so do state statutes. They define the gopher as a “vertebrate pest” right alongside rats and mice. Sisolak says exterminating the gophers is justified because of the reports of bites and because they do so much damage.
“They can move two tons of dirt in a year and create 200 mounds, and those mounds are huge,” he said.
Taxpayers wind up footing the bill for gopher damage.
But how effective is the Rodenator? It’s hard to know how many gophers are killed, because getting a body count would entail digging up the collapsed tunnels to find all the casualties.
Corry says the county have killed thousands of the gophers each year. Parker, who has worked for the parks department for more than 20 years, said the county used to cut into the burrows and tried poison and traps.
“This is certainly the best thing we’ve used,” he says.
“The lack of new mounds and tunnels indicates (the Rodenator’s) effectiveness,” Corry says.
The real test of the Rodenator’s success comes not from e-mails between government employees and not-for-profit groups, but from the mouths of people at the front lines of the county’s gopher war.
Soccer and softball players are returning to Sunset Park’s fields to play because the ground is smooth once again, Parker says.
Carl Spackler would be proud.
This will be the height of my Vegas vacation. Any chance Bill Murray would do the next two weekends at Sunset Park?
Lets hope they'er not like the Viet Cong, the VC's defeated us in war! Best to just poison them, professioinally.
Back East...we had to deal with woodchucks....these guys are big enough for a lease and collar...and their holes are massive.Once these guys settle down in a area forget it.Loving animals of all kinds it's hard to "do them in"....so I merely slid a note down the hole telling them their RENT was being increased effective the 1st of the month...they went to a cheaper neighborhood.(If only that were true)
Au Revoir, GO FAIR!!!
TOO TOO Funny!...love it!!...no doubt Al Czervik is behind it all...can Judge Smails be filing a civil suit as I write?...LOVE IT!!
OH my allah...the RODENATOR!!!...Sisolak NEEDS to be in Caddyshack 3...toooooooo fuuuunnnnnyyyyy!...Mr Sun, I never knew you had a funny side!
Sisolak go back to hassling Firefighters, and leave the poor animals alone.
By jkush654
""Lets hope they'er not like the Viet Cong, the VC's defeated us in war! Best to just poison them, professioinally.""
PLEASE find something else to compare to...your statement is totally inaccurate
Thanks
Maybe when he's out of office, we can get the TERMINATOR to operator the RODENATOR.
That should get people back to the park...
Back East we dealt with these pests with a .22 rifle! With all the retired military out here you would think the County could get some marksmen to take out a few of these critters. Perhaps make it a Metro nightime SWAT mission complete with nightvision on slow nights. I am impressed with the Rodenator but it doesn't seem to be winning the war. Besides, Sisolak does look a bit like Ted Knight and likes press opportunities. Mayor Goodman could play the role of Rodney Dangerfield.
By lvcorvette:
My comment ( Viet Cong )is exactly accurate, I was quoting Joe Schoenmann from paragraph #1 of the story. Best read both the text and the comments.
Good Stuff!!
I highly approve. Go Steve!!
Great big gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts....greasy grimy gopher guts. Take that PETA!!!!
Send them to Minnesota.......home of the "Golden Gophers" !!
Sounds like PETA has way to much to much time on their hands, they should be down in the gulf helping to save animals that are covered in oil and dying a slow painful death rather then concentrating on rat like varmits that are biting children in the desert!
Oh, and by the way, Vietnam was a conflict NOT a WAR!
i want that job . how much does gopher patrol make ? what are the job qualifications ?
Blast away!! I think this is great.
S711
Even the gophers are being being evicted in Vegas...
I think Peta is right, this is way to cruel on these animals, to be burned alive in a hole is unthinkable. There has to be another way to remove the gophers, they get pretty big, so the pain must be unbearable to die like that. Put yourself in the gophers position, just think if you had to live in a hole, and some guy came and put a fire bomb in the hole and burned up you and your babies, this is sick stuff. Very sad....:(
"I think Peta is right, this is way to cruel on these animals, to be burned alive in a hole is unthinkable"
If the detonation speed is 5,000 feet per second like the article says, they aren't dying from being burned alive, they are dying from the effects of the explosion and it is immediate. We use this type of effect for the warheads on some of our predator fired missiles. It's called a thermobaric weapon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric... As far as I'm concerned, if we can use it on Mideast rats, we can use it on Las Vegas rats too.
Will the Rodenator work on corrupt, self-serving politicians that need to be blasted out of office? Maybe the Ensignator? LOL
Gophers where there first, leave 'em be. Should lions be removed from Africa because they bite?
PETA claims to "have grave concerns for the welfare of gophers and other animals in the vicinity of Sunset Park." Ahhhh, yet only certain animals, as they suggest using mothballs to entice the varmints out of their holes! Poor little moths...so low on the food chain so as not to get support from a PETA cruelty caseworker...hypocrites I say!
I had a gopher problem in Wisconsin years ago. I had a german shepherd that left piles of poo on a daily basis. I took it and stuffed it into the holes and they soon decided to move. That worked with a wood chuck also. Encourage everyone to bring their dogs to the park and collect the dog poo and stuff it into the holes. Good fertalizer also.
our tax dollars hard at work. keep up the good work, not like there is anything else more important to do.
its alot less barbaric than flooding the hole and when they come up whacking them with a baseball bat its called whack-a-mole
Can't we just transport them to Arizona?
methinks we should just give them some meth from he evidence lab. Crank em to death.
Oh to be fair, get them high on some pot from the evidence locker first, then, sprinkle some of that crystal meth down the hole. Wait a minute, better add some smack too, make it an 8 ball.
The sad thing is, when I was young, I used to ride my horses over at Sunset Park, even rode them around the horse racing trail that used to be at Sunset Park, maybe, to many people moved here, and there is not any place for animals to live anymore. Peta is right, Sunset park used to be beautiful with all sorts of living creatures, now humans have destroyed everything over there. Very very sad.. Sometimes I wish Vegas could be like it used to be, small and caring...:)
Have no fear, folks---Metro is on the way!!!
Yea metro will be startled and start shooting,,,,,,, at something.....
Why is peta and whoever else so worried about a rat... If you like them so much,, have them move in with you......
At first I thought "wow, what's that gopher doing in a jacket and tie?" And then I saw the photo caption read "Steve Sisolak". My bad.
And then I thought of a rodent joke but thought better about posting it...
I waited a day before commenting, because I realize that my feelings on this matter are somewhat bizarre.
My wife and I actually catch and release insects from our home rather than squash them, on the theory that even insects are life forms.
Therefore, it is very difficult for us to condone killing the gophers.
Having said that, once an animal (or insect) becomes a legitimate pest with adverse results such as gopher bites and sprained ankles in a public park, then it is hard even for us to fault the park authorities.
Las Vegas, plagued with record high unemployment, continuing home/business foreclosures, devaluation of home prices and a neverending stagnant economy, FINALLY has some good news.
We have declared war on gophers.
And we are winning!
The buisness is PARKS and recreation not rodent habitat. They put up nice parks and taking out rodents is part of maintaining the park. if you wana protect the rodents put them in your yard and see how long till your ready to buy a rodentator.
I grew up watching The Love Boat, and I may never drink that image of Fred Grandy out of my head.
Oh Mr. Gopher I got a surprise for you!
Doesn't PETA stand for People Eating Tasty Animals ?