*knocking on wood* The gophers haven't showed their ugly heads around here, at least not yet. Perhaps the population of gopher snakes has gone up. We used to have at least three kinds of snakes around here: gopher, king, and rattler. Years ago, my brother and I used to dig up the maze of tunnels out in the yard and periodically, we'd come across a gopher snake. Maybe you could import some gopher snakes.