How did you spend the last Monday of 2025?

Doing battle with a gopher(s) that is decimating the aloe plants I've been planting in the border strip between my yard and the neighbors driveway.

The 4' wide 40' long strip is steep. It's heavy, clay and expansive soil..now rain saturated. There are several 4" drainage pipes at various depths in the strip coming down from the street uphill of us.

I don't know if the gophers eat the bases of the aloes for sustenance or to clear tunnel routes.

I won't use poison because we enjoy the wildlife.

I've used wire traps successfully in the past (in a level lawn), but these hill dwelling gophers keep backfilling the wire-trapped holes. I'd probably get SWAT-ed if I set out carrots and waited at sunrise with a cup of coffee, my tablet, and a pellet rifle. ---crazy man in his front yard with a gun!!!