Argentine Gopher

I need a mesh to sift my yellow stones from tucu-tucu’s mound

of grubbed-up sand. So sharp, its ever sprouting teeth, its shoveling toes. 

What’s the world record for distance dug? Miles mounded? Have tucu-tucus

caverns between their tunnels? Birthing places? Garbage dumps?

I love nature, but what if tucu-tucus drill through our house’s walls? 

Tomorrow I might wake up to concrete rubble beside our bed.

Mike, who rips off grasshopper heads & gouges wood-boring beetles

from overhead beams, is threatening mayhem – shotgun or pitchfork.

Decades ago I woke at dawn to noise on the roof outside a room in my  

brother's home. Naked & gunning for gopher, he aimed a twenty-two.

Tucu-tucu, I’m warning you, keep to the open sand beyond our lot.

You’re better light through my camera lens than dead meat on Mike’s tines.

Ctenomys argentinus, tucu-tucu