The Gopher Story!!!

The first thing i noticed when i landed in Minneapolis during the start of fall is an abundance of gophers(squirrel cousins) running around from tree to tree,chasing each other. It almost seemed to me that the gophers outnumbered the humans in Minneapolis. They looked very cute with a long bushy tail and with quick glances around, they being very scared lot, and running away from humans as they neared them. I really got fascinated by these creatures.

As you might find in US there are several dustbins around the housing complexes and you can sometimes find some gophers running near them in search for food. One fateful day i noticed a gopher caught in the hole of a dustbin near my house. I was not sure how it got in(probably because the dustbin had its top cover open) but it was trying to get out of it from a small hole and got stuck. Its hind legs and its bushy tail were not coming out. It was fighting to come out of the hole with its head and its fore legs out. No matter how strongly it was trying to come out it couldn't because its hind portion was fatter and its legs and tail weren't coming out. I felt pity for it and placed a thermo-col piece close to it so that it could use it as a support to pull itself out. But it was very ferocious, probably out of fear, that it crushed the thermo-col with its legs. I did not dare to touch it fearing it might bite me. Well i tried helping by pushing it from behind using a thick stick. Unfortunately for it there were some trash thrown on it so it couldn't overcome it to come out. I removed the trash for it but it couldn't help itself out because of its fat body. Later on in the evening i saw two american guys wearing those baseball gloves trying to pull it out but of no avail. By this time the gopher lost its energy and wasn't trying to come out. The tired guys finally gave up saying "after all its a gopher" and went their way. The poor helpless gopher lost all its energy and i could sense its end was near. The next morning i could see it hanging out of the hole lifeless. I felt lot of pity for it and wondered if i couldn't do my bit much to help it out. Of course a couple of others too tried but couldn't get it out.

Somehow the cleaning guys never took an interest in removing the carcass and the location being on my return way i everyday could observe it lying there lifeless. It was very depressing to watch it everyday. Sometimes I tried to ignore it and took another route to avoid it. One day it occurred to me that we people too get trapped like this gopher because of our greed,selfishness and our actions.

I cannot fathom how it could have entered it, i reasoned to myself that it might be looking for some food and ventured into the dustbin. For a gopher its a forbidden man made territory to have entered in search of more food while it could find its sources on trees and around. Or it could have accidentally fallen from the top of the adjoining tree. But I thought to myself that we humans sometimes deliberately enter these forbidden zones in terms of habits like smoking,drinking,working a lot with scant regard to health for lucre,corruption,overeating knowing fully well of its consequences and we get trapped like that helpless gopher unable to come out of it.

The traps could be like cancer, overweight, bad health, loss of credibility, loss of love,loss of life which we cannot get back most of the times. Some try to come out them with the help of others or by themselves, some live to experience the fate that they have brought on themselves. Yes i could sense some great lesson for the mankind from the actions of that poor gopher and the subsequent end it met.

Probably every person should look within themselves to check themselves from going into these traps laid with our own hands from which there might not be a return. We need to be wary of such things and constantly WATCH OURSELVES!!!