Prairie dogs sucked up by vacuum (That's ONE way to get rid of 'em...)

AZCentral.com / Arizona Republic ^ | 9.28.03 | David Kelly

[mhking]

CORTEZ, Colo. - On a lonesome alfalfa field in the shadow of the San Juan Mountains, a little brown head pops up and swivels like a periscope in its hole.

Not far away, Gay Balfour squints hard in the midday sun. "That's it!" he exclaims, leaping into his boxy truck and gunning it down the field. The head swiftly disappears.

[mhking]

Just damn.

If you want on the new list, FReepmail me. This IS a high-volume PING list...

[As i mentioned, the B/C & JD! lists are going to float into and out of whack over the forseeable future, while I try to cobble a rig back together for myself. My apologies for any incovenience or misunderstandings in this time frame. New signups/removals may be flaky in this time-frame as well; please bear with me, and keep in mind you may have to FReepmail me more than once for me to get it done. Thanks again!]

[maro]

Caddyshack ping.

[50sDad]

Make this work on moles, and you have a real business!

[mad puppy]

"But dealing with them has become a politically charged issue. Widespread poisoning and shooting of the animals is increasingly frowned upon despite the damage they do."

Red mist.

[tazman3]

Is fishin' still legal in Colorada?

http://www.freedomnet.cnchost.com/pdf/pdft.htm

[spokeshave]

There is a company in Texas that has a back pack device...cylinders of Oxygen and Propane.....fill the warrens with this mixture then light it up.....resulting overpressure fries the moles/prarie dogs etc.

[xJones]

His company, Dog Gone, plucks thousands of prairie dogs from ranches, Indian reservations, medical centers and housing developments every year.

Uh oh. But even if you're a prairie dog plucker, I'll still respect you.:)

[reagan_fanatic]

Varmit-Cong ping

[OXENinFLA]

I wonder what happens when he puts the machine is reverse?

[vetvetdoug]

I like this article. This gave our little clinic a good laugh this morning.

[TomHarkinIsNotFromIowa]

It's the cute name.

[blackdog]

Exaust pipe from my truck, A fexible hose of same size, a baseball bat, a few sandwiches and a bottle of wine. In recent years we gave up the bat at my children's insistance and just let the Aussie Cattle Dog tear em up.

Ground Hogs, or Terras Swini as we call them are cute, but cause horror in a livestock field. If you've ever been on a horse at a good run and hit varmint earth, you might have lived to talk about your bones mending. The horse does not.

The truck exhaust drives em up and out of the holes a bit dizzy and the dog gets em.

We also used to fish for them with flyrods. You put a noose of flyrod line around the hole. When their heads pop out, you yank for all you're worth and hold on for dear life. A 30lb groundhog can work up quite a length of line before you tire him out.

[blackdog]

"The only good varmint is a dead varmint"- Carl Spackler

[China Clipper]

Not to be outdone, but a .223 rifle hit to the dog is pretty painless from 300 meters out......At least that is what we tell our kids when we hunt Prairie dogs.. :)

[Gorzaloon]

Man, it must suck to be a prairie dog these days.

Make this work on moles, and you have a real business!

Years ago in my neighborhood we had a vole infestation. They were eating everyone's bulbs, etc.

It was learned that a self-sparking MAPP torch, with the button half depressed, would flood the vole hole with an explosive mixture of MAPP gas and air..then when the button was fully depressed, the spark would detonate it. Rocks and dirt and a little smoke would come flying out of the newly-discovered exit holes, or sometimes from new craters in the ground. While no one ever saw a dead vole from this, the holes never seemed to become re-occupied. More and more neighbors would go to the hardware store and get MAPP pushbutton torches. Saturday mornings were a chorus of muffled THUMPS as The Enemy was engaged.

I suppose ELF and PETA would not like it much.

[Tijeras_Slim]

Sod-poodle ping

[blackdog]

When I lived near Charlotte, the gas lines were so bad that on calm early mornings before the air was stirred up, dogs would drop from the gas fumes rising from the sidewalks.

When Charlotte built a golf course on top of an old landfill, a golfer couldn't find his ball in a crevice that he hit it into. He used his Zippo lighter to see if he could spot it and BBBBOOOOMMMMMMM! He ignited a gas pocket the size of a swimming pool.

[50sDad]

And the acronym stands for....

(Just Curious Of Course!)

[Gorzaloon]

And the acronym stands for....

MAPP is a Dow trademark for methylacetylene propadiene. It is sold in yellow Bernzomatic cylinders, for torches that use it..Some torches come with an extra MAPP orifice. It is not as dangerous as acetylene, and has more BTUs/pound, but burns hotter than propane.

When used with cutting torches, it conserves on oxygen use.

[biggerten]

Checkout the following website - death to moles!

http://rodenator.com/rodenator_pro

The Rodenator Pro TM uses a controlled mixture of propane and oxygen that is injected in the rodents burrow. A built-in, self contained ignition system then ignites the mixture, creating an underground shockwave or concussion that instantly kills the rodent and collapses the tunnel system of most burrowing rodents species.

[pabianice]

Can we bring one to the Democratic National Convention next year?

"And now, I'd like to introduce our next spea...WOOSH...EYowww!...*THUMP*...

[Revelation 911]

A prairie dog, sucked out of its home at speeds approaching 60 mph, spins up the 5-inch-wide hose, banks off a foam wall and slides into the back of the truck.

The twelve year old in me is laughing and giggling - I cant stop - something very bugs bunny about the whole thing

[Bulldog1967]

Nothing that can't be solved with the application of .223!

[ctlpdad]

Rodenator Pro Price: $1845.00

That's a big chunk o' change, but looks a bit safer that just sticking a standard homeowner propane or mapp torch in the hole & sparking, especially with the loggers hardhat.

[glorgau]

A built-in, self contained ignition system then ignites the mixture, creating an underground shockwave or concussion that instantly kills the rodent and collapses the tunnel system of most burrowing rodents species

This is roughly analogous to methods used against the Taliban in Afghanistan!

[sheik yerbouty]

Why not find a way to smuggle the prairie dogs into some jihadistan to wreak havoc?

[wardaddy]

Sod poodle ping.

[mhking]

"And now, I'd like to introduce our next spea...WOOSH...EYowww!...*THUMP*...

You're bad...I love it!

[MediaMole]

Old CNN video on this guy...

2.2MB MOV video

[dennisw]

hahahahaha

[dennisw]

VarmintCong in my sights

[mtbopfuyn]

Don't suppose the journalist could add another sentence on what happens to the prairie dogs after they're caught.

[Charles Martel]

I wonder... does this guy have the only "varmint vacuum" truck? I could swear that I've read about this operation before - except the prairie dogs were simply relocated, not caged in someone's garage.

As I recall, someone here on FR once mentioned following the vacuum truck to its rural destination - with a scoped rifle!

[NTW64]

Still laughing @ You got your sulkers, your whiners, your complainers ... you know, just like Democrats. You have to wonder why these groups would rather see the animals bludgeoned instead of any other method, because thats all they are causing to happen.

[bicycle thug]

The Black footed ferret only exists in small numbers in captivity because of prairie dog eradication. That's what happens when people exterminate too deeply into any species' population.

I do applaud this guy fo finding a better way to deal with them then by using poison. But I would be happier if their main preditor was still enriching the ecosystem it was once a part of.

[Beelzebubba]

I think these vacuums are a shameful waste of perfectly good varmint hunting opportunities!

[BayouCoyote]

There IS a better way..


www.dogbegone.com

[Joe Hadenuf]

Yikes......

[LTCJ]

"We have 10,000 to 15,000 acres of prairie dogs in our county now. We had 800 acres in 1998."

I was last in Boulder in 1992 and there were PD holes right outside the hotel all over the slopes of the interstate on/off ramps. It wasn't hard to tell there was a problem brewing, if not out of control, back then.

Of course, by now I'm sure each and every one of the little darlin's has been registered to vote in the Democratic primary.

[fire_eye]

A built-in, self contained ignition system then ignites the mixture, creating an underground shockwave or concussion that instantly kills the rodent

Hmmm... "A built-in, self-contained ignition system then ignites the powder charge, creating internal pressures of thousands of PSI which propels the projectile forward into the rodent, creating an internal shockwave or concussion that instantly kills the rodent..."

I would like one of those vacuum systems, though, yupscaled to be able to vacuum yuppie "Progressives" out of schools, coffeehouses, and media outlets (don't ask what I'd do with them once I'd gotten them in the truck...).

Well, maybe not the coffeehouses... I've heard those are "Progressive" game refuges...

[RJS1950]

As to where he releases the vermin, I propose that he drive each tankload down to Mexico and blow them all out of the tank into mex. Give them back a small fraction of the problem they allow to invade our country. Better yet, go around and suck up the illegals into the tank and then blow them back across the border.

[prairiebreeze]

Common sense tells you that there are no easy ways to get a prairie dog out of its hole."

Never try to impress common sense onto animal activists.

Prairie dogs often co-habitate in their holes with other critters. Namely rattlesnakes. And rattlers kill livestock and don't do much for children, or property values either. As far as I'm concerned, if you've got prairie dogs, you've got a far bigger problem.

Prairie

[capt. norm]

Just what I was going to ask.

Prairie dog fishing is about as much fun as you can find on a nice fall weekend in Colorado.

It has to be tried to be appreciated.

It would be even more fun (major league) if PETA would just come out and make a big stink about it.

[RoughDobermann]

I was last in Boulder in 1992 and there were PD holes right outside the hotel all over the slopes of the interstate on/off ramps. It wasn't hard to tell there was a problem brewing, if not out of control, back then

You should see it now...

[Willie Green]

I wonder... does this guy have the only "varmint vacuum" truck? I could swear that I've read about this operation before - except the prairie dogs were simply relocated, not caged in someone's garage.

I found a pic:

[Dog Gone]

I've been outed!!!

[Ryle]

Here's what one creative Alberta community did when they had a few too many gophers/prairie dogs:

http://www.roadtripamerica.com/places/gopher.htm

The Torrington Gopher Hole Museum has several dozen of the critters - all stuffed and set up in dioramas - there's a Royal Canadian Mounted Gopher, Reverend Gopher, gophersmith, etc.

And the ones that are missed by the taxidermy brigade - well, our teenager seems to be the only person in his class at school that's ever used them as targets (yet another of the problems with schools today LOL), but he's invited back year after year to a couple of area ranches to practice with his .22 and make a bit of a dent in the population of the varmints.

[Charles Martel]

Wow, a steel catch tank. Those burrowing rodents must be tougher than I figured. ;-)

Reading through the story again, a few things don't quite add up. For example, the guy and his wife were supposedly on the front steps of the bankruptcy courthouse when he was inspired by a dream to go forth and build that off-road Shop Vac.

I'm not quite sure how vacuum boy turns a profit; indeed, the article makes it sound like he's rounding up the rodents on his own initiative. Are ranchers paying him for this whistle pig abatement program?

Then there's the air-conditioned garage filled with caged prairie dogs. Add up the electricity for the A/C, the Purina Prairie Dog Chow and all other related expenses, and this sounds more and more like an operation financed by some anti-hunting organization.

Perhaps I'm way off base... maybe he's secretly selling their little pelts to some furrier in Eastern Europe and sending the rest to a dog food processing plant. Waste not, want not!