As the former district sales manager of a now defunct Internet business, the last place Mark Ayers expected to find himself was in the pest control business, hunting gophers before daybreak. Yet he recently found himself on a Healdsberg, California vineyard, the protector of 650 Zinfandel vines.

The gophers, which voraciously dine on plant roots and can produce up to three litters of young a year, lay entrenched in tunnels beneath Ayers' feet across 2.5 acres of terraced vineyard. Wielding a wandlike device that injects a mix of propane and oxygen into the pests' burrows then ignites it, Ayers took the fight to the troublesome varmints.

Read more of this story at:

http://haoodnla.com/article/lxy0921890y9j01/520561