34. “The Battle of the Gophers.”
We got a call a few years back that was straight out of Caddyshack. Somebody had had enough of the gopher trashing his lawn. He had no idea he was up against the Sun Tzu of gophers. The homeowner thought that the best way to deal with the gopher was to approach the situation like a VC tunnel, so instead of using a frag grenade, he dumped a five-gallon can of gasoline down the gopher hole, waited with a varmint pistol, and ignited it off. A minor crater formed in his yard as a result of the subsequent explosion. I’m still amazed that there was a proper fuel-to-air ratio in the network of tunnels that allowed such a massive explosion to occur.
“However, the gopher was adamant about not giving up without a battle. The gopher emerged from the hole enveloped in flames, setting fire to the man’s yard. It dashed into the man’s burning shed and sank into a void space in the wall, where he perished. His still smoldering remains, like the martyr perk from Modern Warfare, set fire to the inside of the wall as well as several flammables. In the end, the man’s backyard was destroyed, and a fourth of his shed burnt down, destroying several power tools as well as a zero-turn mower. If he had hired an exterminator, he would have saved a few thousand dollars.”
