Rodent Spotlight: Gopher

Now, here is a very common rodent in fiction. The gopher will always be noted as the farmer's worst nightmare. I remember seeing many cartoons while growing up portraying these tunneling miscreants as the main antagonists. The general idea of a good, solid gopher cartoon is that the rodents will set up a system of tunnels directly underneath the rows of planted vegetables, and then they can easily pull them out from below. This food is then eaten rather gluttonously because that is simply what a good gopher does.

The farmer is not commonly the foil for the gophers, but it is often the farmer's lackey or pet that takes the brunt of the humiliation. For example, the farm may belong to Mickey Mouse; however, it is Pluto that must fend off the gophers. Of course, failure means that Pluto could be either punished or seen as the culprit in the first place. Maybe, the dog had a sudden fit of vegetarianism.

You may find this interesting, but the common cartoon portrayal of the gopher is not really all that different than the real creature. The rodents will actually create extensive tunnels underneath rows of crops and pull them under for their own food supply. The reason for the striking similarity is likely because people knew a lot more about farming in those days--being that they were simpler times. And when you got a real rodent doing something so horrible, you absolutely must make an antagonist of them in popular fiction.

Although history has seen many generic examples of these tunneling villains, you may remember a certain duo by the name of Mac and Tosh from their series of Looney Tunes. These gophers did nothing dissimilar than any other gopher, but it as how positively fruity they were about it that made them so popular. They were always super polite to each other--constantly insisting that each other should proceed first. It was like watching thieves with their pinkies up. These cartoons were incredibly cute. My favorite of them was actually when they showed up as alien gophers on an episode of Duck Dodgers where they forgot all about what they were doing because of a sudden tickle fight between themselves. It was positively delightful.

Another well-known gopher--this one not really all that villainous--is the rodent known as Samuel J. Gopher from the Disney series of Winnie the Pooh cartoons. This gopher attempts to insert himself into the story to either give the silly animals some wise gopher advise or to help them in some way with his unique gopher abilities. Apparently, this character was not in the original books written by A.A. Milne, and Samuel J. Gopher confirms this in the cartoon by claiming he is, indeed, not at all from those books. I thought this to be a very clever way to introduce an original Disney character to the series, and I have always liked him.

Gophers are one of those rodents that simply are begging to be written about. They come across to me as very dutiful thieves. Thieving is their main way of thriving, and they are fairly organized in the ways they accomplish the task. They do not live in large groups but seem to function well in ones and twos. They make wonderful nemeses for farmers, and when they have the gift of speech, it makes the experience all the more fun. It's okay to feel sorry for the poor hard-working farmers, but there's nothing wrong with enjoying a fun villain either; and where gophers are concerned, there is a whole lot of fun to be had.

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