"Gopher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Sunday-school Society, but they saw a premium offered for killing gophers. They are a mischievous little animal, devouring a large amount of wheat, corn and other grain every year. The farmers pay two cents for each dead gopher. The proof that the gopher has been killed is his tail. Now these little Indian boys had been so interested in the story told of the work being done by the Sunday-school Society, that they spent their Saturday afternoon holiday snaring gophers. They brought the tails in the envelopes ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... for Dixie, there was a great deal of consternation and excitement on the north bank of the river, and a considerable amount of headlong riding. But on the tenth day he slipped through the cordon, got into the woods, and was making for the river when a patrol shot at him near Gopher Creek, but lost him in the impenetrable ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... morning it was done as the chief had said. The children were tied to the tree with rawhide strings, and the people tore down all the lodges and moved off. The old woman called her dog to follow her, but he was digging at a gopher hole and would not come. Then she went up to him and struck at him hard with her whip, but he dodged and ran away, and then stood looking at her. Then the old woman became very angry and cursed him, but he paid no attention; and finally ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... of dese hard-boiled wife-beaters, huh? Just a mean old woman-Jessie! If I don't lay a hearing on you, God's a gopher! Now what made you ...
— Three Plays - Lawing and Jawing; Forty Yards; Woofing • Zora Neale Hurston
... reflectively, "it's a lucky thing for us this world was all built before we were born. Know that? Because if they'd ever started it under modern conditions, there wouldn't be anything to it yet but the Garden of Eden and Atlantic City and maybe Gopher Prairie.... ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... and were friends of my cousin Owen; but two more daring, resolute, and skilful young seamen never trod a deck. The two firemen were young machinists I had shipped at Montreal when they were out of work. They were brothers, and the sons of a Vermont farmer. Washington Gopher, an excellent cook, was a gray-haired colored man, who had rendered the best ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... certain it was made by a bird; the President was of like opinion; and I kicked about in the tufts of grass, hoping to flush the bird. Now here, now there, arose this sharp, but bird-like note. Finally we found that it was made by a species of gopher, whose holes we soon discovered. What its specific name is I do not know, but it should be called ...
— Camping with President Roosevelt • John Burroughs
... unfriendly. Guess them's gopher's words. But say, pard, the law ain't got me yet. Wot d'ye think of the road across the keg? Mighty fine trail that." He laughed as though ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... are," replied Old Mother Nature. "It isn't a very close relationship, still you are related. All of you are Rodents. So are all the members of the Rat and Mouse family, the Beaver family, the Porcupine family, the Pocket Gopher family, the Pika family, and ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... the mad gallop came without the inciting of Bart and his follower, for all at once one of the Indians' horses planted his hoof in a gopher hole, cunningly contrived by the rat-like creature just in the open part of the plain; and unable to recover itself or check its headlong speed, the horse turned a complete somersault, throwing his rider right over his head quite twenty feet away, and as ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... like a mole, beyond our sight? If she sees fit to found a modern sect of Troglodytes, I can't understand that the wheels of society are thereby scotched, or that the public has a shadow of right to raise a hue-and-cry and strive to unearth her, as if she were a fox, a catamount, or a gopher. It is useless for society to constitute itself a turning-lathe for rounding off all individual angularities, and grinding people down to dull uniformity until they are as indistinguishable as a bag of unpainted marbles or of black-eyed peas; and, if God had intended ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... unambitious: he was content to be assistant editor of the Mail; content to be bullied and belittled by old Rogers; content to go on his own idle, sunny way, playing with his small, chubby son, foraging the woods with a dozen small boys at his heels, working patiently over a broken gopher-trap or a rusty shotgun, for some small admirer. Worst of all, Barry had been intemperate, years ago, and there were people who believed that his occasional visits to San Francisco, now, were merely excuses for revels with his old newspaper ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. A window ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... (snow-geese) pass up the river; some of them are perfectly white, except the large feathers of the first joint of the wing, which are black, though in every other characteristic they resemble common gray brant. We also saw but could not procure an animal (gopher) that burrows in the ground, and is similar in every respect to the burrowing-squirrel, except that it is only one-third of its size. This may be the animal whose works we have often seen in the plains and prairies; they resemble the labors of the salamander in the sand-hills ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... neck towards the prospector, with the air of a turkey-gobbler about to peck, he crooned, softly: "Ira, it's a heap risky puttin' your faith in maverick sharps that trail around the country, God-a'mightying it, renaming little, old rocks into precious stones, seein' gold mines in every gopher-hole they come to. They names your backyard and the rocks appertainin' thereunto a heap fashionable, and like as not some sucker gives him good money to float the ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... dark Street, and then dropping in at the Cafe Acropolis, in Halsted Street, and lodging houses in even less savory quarters. He duly canvassed every likely dive, every "melina," every gambling house and yegg hang out. He engaged in leisurely games of pool with stone-getters and gopher men. He visited bucket-shops and barrooms, and dingy little Ghetto cafes. He "buzzed" tipsters and floaters and mouthpieces. He fraternized with till tappers and single-drillers. He always made his inquiries after Binhart seem accidental, ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... at Vicksburg, Miss., fell a small piece of alabaster; that, at Bovina, eight miles from Vicksburg, fell a gopher turtle. ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... Achates[Lat][obs3], pal, buddy, alter ego. [criminal law] confederate; accomplice; complice; accessory, accessory after the fact; particeps criminis[Lat]; socius criminis[Lat]. aide-de-camp, secretary, clerk, associate, marshal; right-hand, right- hand man, Friday, girl Friday, man Friday, gopher, gofer; candle-holder, bottle-holder; handmaid; servant &c. 746; puppet, cat's-paw, jackal|!. tool, dupe, stooge, ame damnee[Fr]; satellite, adherent. votary; sectarian, secretary; seconder, backer, upholder, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... high-noted 'zing zing' of bullets sounds like a swarm of angry bees, while high overhead shrapnel and shell go shrieking on their way. Here and there you may see spades full of earth being thrown up as if by invisible hands, marking the onward work of the German gopher-like pioneers in their subterranean warfare. ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... in his life had Lawler heard that sound—once when a cow-pony which had been bogged down in quicksand had neighed when he had been drawn under; and again when a horse which he had been riding had stepped into a gopher hole and had broken a leg. He had been forced to shoot the animal, for which he had formed a sincere attachment; and it had seemed to him that when he drew the pistol the horse knew what impended—for its shrill neigh had been almost ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... at his master by turns. The man was walking hardly three hundred yards from where Stone, rifle in hand, lay, and had reached the footpath leading from the bench to the creek bottom when Stone, half rising, covered him slowly with point-blank sights. In the path ahead, the dog had struck a fresh gopher hole and, still yelping, was pawing madly into it, when a rifle cracked. The man with the pail, swung violently half around by the shock of a spreading bullet, jerked convulsively and the pail flew clattering from his hand. He struggled an instant to keep his footing, ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... morning he read on the bottom of one page: "When Noah was one hundred and twenty years old he took unto himself a wife, who was"—then turning the page—"one hundred and forty cubits long, forty cubits wide, built of gopher wood, and covered with pitch inside and out." He was naturally puzzled at this. He read it again, verified it, and then said: "My friends, this is the first time I ever met this in the Bible, but I accept it as an ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... in the dust the track of a lizard, a kangaroo-mouse, and a horned toad. We could see for ourselves Bre'r Jack-rabbit and Sis' Gopher skipping away in the greasewood. The horses and cattle had their own broad-beaten roads converging from far away toward an occasional break in the canon wall, where the thirsty ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... an implement, in use in Illinois and other Western States, called the Gopher Plow, worked by a capstan, which drains wet land by merely drawing through it an iron shoe, at about two and a half feet in depth, without the ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... attempt to bring life and culture to Gopher Prairie and Gopher Prairie's reaction toward her teachings have made this book one of the most famous of the ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... son-of-a-coyote guess he didn't believe no such guarantee? No, an' I guess he best not. I'm a man of peace, as all knows in this yer city, but I'd hate to try an' shut out a blizzard in winter by stuffin' that gopher's perforated carkis under the doorjamb when I was thro' with it. I say right here we're out to save carkises—I mean souls. An', say, fellers, jest think. Gettin' your souls saved for a few measly cents. Ain't that elegant? No argyment, no kickin'. Them souls is jest goin' to be dipped, an' ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... Secret Service Chief, and the two were as brothers of one mind. To lapse into the rustic figures of the farms, on that subject of secrecy they fell together like a shock of oats. Why should the world know of the splendid gopher work of London Bill? The gold had been saved; to publish the dangers it had grazed might inspire other bandits. No, secrecy was the word; that question Inspector Val and the Secret Service Chief answered as one man. And so no word crept forth. When ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... when we are out-of-doors we are shelling the reluctant almond, poisoning the voracious gopher, pruning grape- vines, and "sich." Now I am only going to shoot to eat, ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... last summer, at the great Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, I overheard a conversation that interested me very much. The subject of it was a queer little animal called a "gopher," which sat stuck up in a case with its comical little head perched up in the air; for it wasn't even alive, but was a ...
— The Nursery, June 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 6 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... cabin of Settler Rowland, as a landmark, stood forth. Barred it was—the white of barked cotton-wood timber alternating with the brown of earth that filled the spaces between—like the longitudinal stripes of a prairie gopher or on the back of a bob-white. Long wiry slough grass, razor-sharp as to blades, pungent under rain, weighted by squares of tough, native sod, thatched the roof. Sole example of the handiwork of man, it crowned one of the innumerable rises, too low ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... the golden crocus, Fair flower of early spring; the gopher white, And fragrant thyme, and all the unsown beauty Which in moist grounds the verdant meadows bear; The ox-eye, the sweet-smelling flower of love, The chalca, and the much-sung hyacinth, And the low-growing violet, to which Dark Proserpine a ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... said Colombo brandishing his sword Impavide, "you lie. And your Gopher Prairie is a lie. And you are all, all contemptible, you who dip your pens in tracing ink and seek to banish ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... trampling. Then a final burst and rattle, a dying of sounds in the distance, a silence as the round-up swept on over the range-land, miles away to the next camping place. Then the little prairie folk—the gopher, the plump-bodied prairie dogs, the mice and the rabbits, would listen long before they crept timidly out to sniff suspiciously the still-tainted air and inspect curiously and with instinctive aversion the strange marks left on the earth to show ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... hysterics to-day," asserted Maud, gravely; "but I didn't blame him. He sent out a party to ride down a steep hill on horseback, as part of a film story, and a bad accident resulted. One of the horses stepped in a gopher hole and fell, and a dozen others piled up ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... source of amusement to all. In the novel domains they now traversed the small dog's excitable nature led him to investigate everything that seemed suspicious, but he was so cowardly, in spite of this, that once when Patsy let him down to chase a gopher or prairie dog—they were not sure which—the animal turned at bay and sent Mumbles retreating with his stubby tail between his legs. His comradeship for Wampus surprised them all. The Canadian would talk seriously to the dog and tell it long stories as if ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... whipped by over my head, making noises like someone snapping a bullwhip. I couldn't tell which direction they came from; I was too busy trying to stuff my feet into a gopher hole under my deadfall. ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... lay there the red sun went down over the spruce swamp west of the plain, and a shorelark on a gopher mound a few yards off twittered his evening song, just as one had done the night before at our shanty door, and though the numb pains were creeping up my arm, and a deadly chill possessed me, I noticed how long his little ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... and then he put on his cap and gloves, and says he, 'Lieutenant Dean, I'm sorry, but my instructions are to place you in close arrest, by order of Colonel Stevens.' Why, you could have knocked me down with the kick of a gopher I was so dumfounded! The lieutenant he didn't say anything for a minute, but turned white and looked like he could have knocked the top of the adjutant's head off. 'An officer will be sent to take charge of the troop,' said the adjutant, 'an' I suppose ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... you all our money. We'll fotch you yams and honey, We'll fill your pipe wid 'baccer, An' twiss your tail wid hay! We'll shod your hoofs wid copper, We'll knob your horns wid silber, We'll cook you rice and gopher, Ef you will ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... his battle-field— Dying for mastery among his hinds. There vainly sprung the affrighted antelope, Beset by glittering eyes and hurrying feet. The dancing grouse at their insensate sport, Heard not the stealthy footstep of the fox; The gopher on his little earthwork stood, With folded arms, unconscious of the fate That wheeled in narrowing circles overhead, And the poor mouse, on heedless nibbling bent, Marked not the silent coiling of the snake. At length we heard a deep and solemn sound— Erupted ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... deck just outside the starboard entrance to the engine room, loaded his pipe, laid his trusty monkey wrench across his knee and gave himself up to the contemplation of this riot we call life. He resembled a cat watching beside a gopher hole. By half-past three o'clock he had finished figuring out approximately the amount of money Mrs. Reardon would have in the Hibernia Bank at the end of five years—figuring on a monthly saving of fifty dollars and interest compounded at the rate of four per cent. ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... unusual miner and underground dweller is the pocket gopher of North and Central America. He is a rat-like animal, and is most plentiful on the plains of the Mississippi region. He is unusual in appearance, dressed in brown and grey fur, with tiny white feet, small eyes and ears, and a short stubby tail. His feet are wonderfully strong, ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... in love, get marrid an' divoorced, bring up fam'lies, an' are supported or devoured be thim, as th' case may be, accumylate money, dodge taxes, dhrink to excess, an' in ivry way act like human bein's. I wudden't be surprised to know that a bear had a tillyphone in his room, an' that th' gopher ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... amongst the trees, but was hopelessly outdistanced on the fallow field adjoining, across which the mare tore with a fine disregard for heavy ground and gopher-holes. When she turned at a sharp angle into the thicket-land beyond, Lute took the long diagonal, skirted the ticket, and reined in Ban at the other side. She had arrived first. From within the ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... Let your braves be ready to start when the gopher comes out of his burrow." Fastening his horse to a cottonwood tree, this miscreant emissary began to whistle a tune, and walked about among the lodges, seeking to attract the attention of some pretty Indian maiden, of which there ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... for the next few years was the whole series of hard-luck parables, with a few chapters from Job thrown in, and then one day he met old Jim. He seemed to cotton to Thorn from the jump. Explained to him that there was nothing in this digging gopher holes in the solid rock and eating Chinaman's grub for the sake of making niggers' wages. Allowed that he was letting other fellows dig the holes, and that he was selling them at a fair margin of profit to young Eastern capitalists who hadn't been in the ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... got a little worried and wrote to me about it. He said that our soft-eyed mining savant was getting us a good many subscribers, and writing up every little gopher hole in North Park, and living on Cincinnati quail, as we miners call bacon; but he said that none of these fine, blooming letters, regarding the assays on "The Weasel Asleep," "The Pauper's Dream," "The Mary Ellen" and "The ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... can tell you another thing about them, though you may not believe it; there will be no wool carpets on the floors,—no, nor rag ones either. The people will walk upon planks of fir and boards of cedar, sycamore from the plains and algum-trees, gopher wood and Georgia pine, inlaid in forms of wondrous grace. There will be no moth or dust to corrupt and strangle, neither creaks nor cracks to annoy. It's a question among theologians whether the millennium will come "all at once and all o'er," or gradually. ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... the remark with all seriousness. "He says as how Fort Wingate is out, and I remarks that sich a move about terminates the performance. He agrees with me—says fust squint them renegades gits at regular troops they'll hunt gopher-holes as ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... from isle and shore the smoke of Indian teepees [a] rose; The hunter plied the silent oar; the forest lay in still repose. The moon-faced maid, in leafy glade, her warrior waited from the chase; The nut-brown, naked children played, and chased the gopher on the grass. The dappled fawn, on wooded lawn, peeped out upon the birch canoe, Swift-gliding in the gray of dawn along the silent waters blue. In yonder tree the great Wanm-dee [b] securely built her spacious nest; The blast that swept the land-locked sea [c] but rocked her clamorous ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... station and the hull of the lost vessel were only a shed and timber to him. How can any man be alive to the significance of a wreck and fluttering flag which he sees twenty times a day? Noah, no doubt, after a year in the ark, came to look upon it as so much gopher-wood, and appreciated it as a good job of joinery ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... was an unusually dark one and the atmosphere was very humid. After we had been on guard possibly an hour, John Officer and I riding in one direction on opposite sides of the herd, and The Rebel circling in the opposite, Officer's horse suddenly struck a gopher burrow with his front feet, and in a moment horse and rider were sprawling on the ground. The accident happened but a few rods from the sleeping herd, which instantly came to their feet as one steer, and were off like a flash. I was riding my Nigger Boy, and as the cattle ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... Spermophilus, with her high-sounding name, Says just to be called "Gopher" is really a shame, And she's right here to tell you—if this knowledge you should lack— She's the only one who wears the stars ...
— Animal Children - The Friends of the Forest and the Plain • Edith Brown Kirkwood
... intuition North Eagle seemed to know just what would interest the white boy—all the romance of the trail, the animals, the game, the cactus beds, the vast areas of mushrooms growing wild, edible and luscious, the badger and gopher holes, and the long, winding, half obliterated buffalo trails that yet scarred the distant reaches. It was only when he pointed to these latter, that he really spoke his mind, breaking into an eloquence that filled Tony with envy. The young redskin seemed inspired; a perfect torrent of words rushed ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... Dutchy had the drop on me an' me without a gun. Juno, ole woman, yuh done us fine that time. . . . Only two more to git, Mira, an' then we're free. I don' say them two ain't goin' to take some gittin'; they're in the boss's own stable, an' he has ears like a gopher. He 'n' the young missus ride ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... head vigorously. "I wouldn't risk her among those gopher-holes." He slid out of his seat and, with an arm around the mare's neck, whispered into her ear, "We won't have any broken legs and broken hearts, will we, honey girl?" Rosa answered by nosing the speaker over with brazen ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... Michoacan, and, like most of the mountainous terrain in this region of Mexico, is volcanic in origin. To the south the Sierra del Tigre descends abruptly to lower elevations of the arid coastal plains, uninhabited by gophers of this genus. The small pocket gopher occurring in the Sierra del Tigre seems to be an undescribed species of the genus Pappogeomys which may be ...
— A New Species of Pocket Gopher (Genus Pappogeomys) From Jalisco, Mexico • Robert J. Russell
... can go anywhere. It trails along the slope of shelving hills like a wild vine; it slides through gopher-hole tunnels as a thread slides through the eye of a needle; it utilizes water-courses; it turns ridiculously sharp corners in a style calculated to remind one of the days when he played "snap-the-whip" and happened to be the snapper himself. This is especially the case if one is sitting on ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... for Los Muertos. The hills were huge rolling hummocks of bare ground, covered only by wild oats. At long intervals, were isolated live oaks. In the canyons and arroyos, the chaparral and manzanita grew in dark olive-green thickets. The ground was honey-combed with gopher-holes, and the gophers themselves were everywhere. Occasionally a jack rabbit bounded across the open, from one growth of chaparral to another, taking long leaps, his ears erect. High overhead, a hawk or two swung ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... to look so doggoned innocent about it," he said. "If you'd been tendin' to your business, you wouldn't have stepped into no damned gopher hole." ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... declared the Drifter. "An' the guy which gets in on the ground floor is goin' to make a clean-up! They's a range there—the Double A—which is right in the middle of things. A guy named Bransford owns her—an' Bransford's on his last legs. He's due to pass out pronto, or I'm a gopher! He's got a daughter there—Mary—which is a pippin, an' no mistake! But she's sure got a job on her hands, if the ol' ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... orphans, set out from their conventional home in a New England village, after having sold it out—the home, not the village—and turned wistful faces toward the wild green plains of the western wilderness, the home of the broncho, the gopher, ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... to have a little free railroading, so they piled on and turned her loose and slid down to Mayfield. They barely stopped the car before she switched into the main line, and they all fell off into the gopher holes along the side and made for Mayfield, red-eyed. The Faculty raised Ned when they heard ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... get back, and we have no time to wander round the homestead that day. Next morning you are up and out early to investigate something for yourself. I know quite well what it is, for you talked "gopher" ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... of Rome at all. Don't tell me of yer Romans, or yer bridge bein' held by three; True manhood's the same in Texas as it was in Rome, d'ye see? Did the Greaser escape? Why certain. I saw the hull crowd over thar At the ranch of Bill Simmons, the gopher, with their glasses over the bar. From ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... head and saying he couldn't think what the world was coming to. As near as I could make him, his idea was that the world was going to be swamped with young ones if something wasn't done about it, like using squirrel poison or gopher traps. ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... of Internet service first floated around 1991 and now (1994) being obsolesced by the World Wide Web. Gopher presents a menuing interface to a tree or graph of links; the links can be to documents, runnable programs, or other gopher menus arbitrarily far ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... and burrows in the fields. It is a mole-like animal but much larger than the common mole. Its legs are short and its front feet strong, with long nails for digging. The fur is soft and silky and dark brown in color. Where the gopher is there may be found the weasel, his greatest enemy. It should be an even fight between them, for they are equally matched in ill-temper and savageness, and are near of a size though ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... the toy Ark of our happy childish memories is built, if not of gopher-wood, at least upon the lines laid down in Scripture. Has Hammy ever tried to get his to float? Mine invariably used to sink—straight to the bottom of the bath. Perhaps that continually-recurrent catastrophe had something to do with the sapping of my infant faith, or the establishment ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the reason for the Guggenhammers and the big English concerns sending in their high-salaried experts. That was their scheme. That was why they had approached him for the sale of worked-out claims and tailings. They were content to let the small mine-owners gopher out what they could, for there would be millions in ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... Leo, after a time, "very old slide, not steep. Plenty gopher on that slide. Dig in dirt. Grizzlum he like eat gopher. Sometam he come there and dig gopher most all day. Maybe-so ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... morning. The boys, finding the place, glued together the connecting pages. The next morning he read on the bottom of one page, "When Noah was one hundred and twenty years old he took unto himself a wife, who was—" then turning the page—"140 cubits long, 40 cubits wide, built of gopher wood—and covered with pitch inside and out." He was naturally puzzled at this. He read it again, verified it, and then said, "My friends, this is the first time I ever met this in the Bible, but I accept this as an evidence of the assertion that we are fearfully ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... to us, what had become of our cheerful wandering Hebrews. We could not suppose they had reached a destination. The meanest boy could lead them miles out of their way to see a gopher-hole. Boys we felt to be their special danger; none others were of that exact pitch of cheerful irrelevancy to exercise a kindred sway upon their minds: but before the attractions of a boy their most settled resolutions would be wax. We thought we could ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ached for some word with you, or even a glance that would make all straight; but those painted devils watched my every move, my every look, the very intaking of my breath, as the coyote watches the gopher-hole when the badger is below. Only for sake of the dead chief at my feet was I given such seemingly free leave among them,—for myself, I had been shipped as were poor De Courtenay's Nor'westers at Wenusk Creek. And now is the time when I must go farther back and tell you of the good chief ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... "No, a gopher, but I'll admit it is a kind of land turtle, although it feeds entirely on grass and never goes near the water," explained Charley, proud of his capture. "Chris, ride on to that first little lake yonder and get a fire started. We'll be there in ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... elapsed. A fearless blue-jay alighted on the bank and made a prospecting peck at the tobacco pouch. It yielded in favor of a gopher, who endeavored to draw it toward his hole, but in turn gave way to a red squirrel, whose attention was divided, however, between the pouch and the revolver, which he regarded with mischievous fascination. Then there was a splash, a grunt, a sudden dispersion of animated nature, ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... was riding into it with a young companion who saw and heard and loved and understood it all. Nothing escaped her; no frail air plant trailing from the high water oaks, no school of tiny bass in the shallows where their horses splashed through, no gopher burrow, no foot imprint of the little wild things which haunt the water's ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... a bit of gopher's fur on to his feather; and he ate a good breakfast of buffalo meat and tramped away over the prairie to the dancing ring. As soon as he came into the ring he turned into a gopher; but there were no gophers' holes there for him to hide ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... he said. "He's leading a sorrel horse—Dolver's horse. Old Morgan got Dolver—looks like, the damned old gopher! Men as willing as Dolver are not found every day." He looked at the third man, who ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... light, and there was a teasing laugh. The outcast sat up like a startled gopher, one hand to his breast, one out before him. Again, a scratch. A tiny flame flickered. Too amazed for fear, Charley put ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... places the streets ran through deep cuts in the bank, and in these banks were the famous "gopher holes." They were [ca]ves dug in the ground, into which a person, if he happened to hear a shell coming, might run for safety. Outside the city, the fortifications were most extensive; rifle-pits ran in every direction, flanked by strong forts, whose battered walls ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon
... then see in Athens, when the mother went in triumph to meet her progeny, and again showed the chambers in which they had been nursed to her now aging children! Their old homes were restored to their former inmates, and forthwith boards of cedar with shelves and beams of gopher wood are most skilfully planed; inscriptions of gold and ivory are designed for the several compartments, to which the volumes themselves are reverently brought and pleasantly arranged, so that no one hinders the entrance of another or injures ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... proves itself a nuisance about the houses where it is as omnivorous an eater as is its far-removed cousin, the house rat. The gopher is one of the mammals whose mark is more often seen than the creature itself. It lives like the mole in underground burrows, coming to the surface only to push up the dirt ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... library has possibilities as an educational institution exceeded only by those of the school. In many cases it is the intellectual center of the community, while in others the caricature of the library of Gopher Prairie in Sinclair Lewis' "Main Street," where one of the chief objects was to keep the books from being soiled or worn out, is not much overdrawn. Increasingly, however, the librarian is studying methods of salesmanship for increasing the ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... the Glossary the meaning of: marveled; scorched; skillet; ridges; reinforcing; habitable; commission; stature; implement; stubble; share; cross-brace; judgment; tormentors; tolerable; unhoused; deposited; clog ging; evaporated. 13. Pronounce: chore; tedious; loam; imaginable; gopher; leisure. ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... start; 40 percent failed from weak growth the first year or two; 10 percent from failure to maintain later growth; 16 percent were winter killed, and 3 or 4 percent died from rodent or similar (mole, gopher, deer, bear) injury. It is evident that by far the greatest losses were suffered within the first two years—not less than seventy percent. Probably more. It would seem that two years of intensive care should not be too burdensome a stint for a ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... a gopher," said Tom, and then the three entered the hut, and Tom, taking a half-empty whisky bottle out of a cupboard, poured some into a cup without a handle, a shaving-cup, and an old ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... the field. The defenders had three heavy guns dismounted during the day, yet suffered little loss in men, for long before this nearly the whole garrison had accustomed themselves to take refuge in their caves and "gopher-holes" at the first sound of Union cannon, and to await its cessation as a signal to return to their posts at the parapet. They were not always so fortunate, however, for more than once it happened that three or four men were killed by the ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... flood of waters was to be sent on the world, Noah was commanded to build an ark of gopher wood for the saving of his house. God gave him special instructions regarding its length, its breadth, its height: he was told where to place its door and window, how to arrange its storeys and rooms, and specially to gather ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... stock," he explained, "every cent of it. Shares par value one dollar. Bound to go up 500 per cent. within a year. Non-assessable. The Blue Gopher mine. Just discovered a month ago. Better get in yourself if you've any ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... as he gazed at the gun he saw that the muzzle was as large as a gopher-hole. A bullet of that size would sink a ship, he meditated in a panic, and as for his foot—what frightful execution it would work! But—it were better to lose a foot than a foot-race, under present conditions, so he began to unlace his shoe. Then ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... columns. Only Apache Yumas remained, and only the least promising of the Apache Yumas at that. Bridger remembered how reluctantly these two had obeyed the summons to go. "If they don't sneak away and come back swearing they have lost the lieutenant, I'm a gopher," said he, and gave orders accordingly to have them hauled before him should they reappear. Confidently he looked to see or hear of them as again lurking about the commissary storehouse after the manner of their people, beggars to the backbone. But the week went by ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... are badger burrows about, and a little beast called a gopher makes almost as bad a hole; they're fond of digging up the trail. If a horse steps into one of those holes, it's apt to bring him down. Besides, we trust a good deal to our luck in this country—one has to run risks that can't be estimated: harvest frost, rust, dry seasons, ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... principal fur-bearing smaller mammals of the north and north-west were wolves, foxes, lynxes, gluttons (wolverene), otters, martens (sables) and black fishing martens, mink (a kind of polecat), ermine-stoats, weasels, polar hares (Lepus timidus), beavers, musquash, lemming, gopher or pouched ground-squirrels, and the common red squirrel of North America. The grey squirrel and striped chipmunk are only ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston |
