Nobody worry 'bout me
Why you got to gimme a fight?
Can't you just let it be?"
–Kenny Loggins, I'm Alright
I unplugged and plugged in our phones multiple times, but nothing.
"Let it rest," my wife Amy said.
"Let it rest?" I said.
"Yes, let it rest."
"That's not a thing."
"Sure it is. Things get tired and need to rest."
"Nope, not a thing."
So I fiddled with it for a few more minutes and then gave up. We visited with my sister and then went to my high school reunion, and on the next day we went out to lunch. The CarPlay connection worked again as if it had never stopped.
"See, I told you," Amy said.
"Damn, what the heck?" I said. "It's still not a thing."
"Yes, it is."
We laughed. After fun weekend of reunion and family time with my sister, niece and great niece, we returned home to find that the gophers had returned to our backyard. In the 13 years we've lived in our house, I can recall only one or two times when we've had gophers in our backyard.
A few months ago I wouldn't have stressed on it as much since we'd let our backyard go. The reason being that our pet rabbit Dragonlily, only a little over a year old, had free reign in our backyard and ate everything in sight. But at the end of April we upgraded our yard with new sod, flagstone and a rabbit run (so our bunny wouldn't eat everything in sight).
We did it all ourselves and we were super proud of it, just like we did when we first moved in all those years ago. And then the gophers came back. With a vengeance. Freshly pushed up dirt piles along the edge of our new flagstone and along the new grass. Plus, we had notice some strange yellow spots on the lawn over the past month and now wondered if it was them -- the friggin' gophers -- digging under the new sod. I tried to flood them out, but that didn't work.
"The gopher can be a friend to bun-bun," Amy said, referring to our rabbit Dragonlily, after I came in cursing about the latest mounds of freshly dug-up dirt.
"No gopher friends," I said.
"C'mon, Sweetie. It'll be fine. A little gopher or two aren't hurting anyone."
"But it's not fine and it's hurting me; you know how much work went into the yard. Should I just let this rest, Sweetie? Maybe it'll just fix itself?"
I tried to say it with a frustrated wink and smile, and she gave me a pass thankfully. She knows how I get and is always much better at letting go than me. Even our rabbit was trying to tell me to chill out, eating one of our flowers when he had a few minutes out of his run, two feet from a fresh gopher hole.
But to no avail; I headed for the local ACE hardware store and asked one of the guys that worked there what humane gopher/mole traps they had. "None that work," he told me. Then I asked for the gopher/mole gas, which looked like little sticks of dynamite with a short fuse. Really.
I wanted this gopher or gophers gone before we left on our family vacation. I lit one little stick of dynamite gas and push it into a hole and covered it with dirt. It was super stinky, too. I did two of these in two different gopher holes, and of course while doing this, I couldn't help remember the scenes in the classic comedy Caddyshack, with Bill Murray trying to blow up the gopher. And the gopher always got away, even after the golf course was completely destroyed.
On the morning we left for our family vacation, I went out to the still dark backyard and noticed a freshly dug out mound of gopher dirt in between two pieces of lovely new flagstone.
I audibly sighed and shook my head.
Nothing to do but let it rest. They can have it all (for now).
I'm alright. I can just let it be.
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