By: Wayne Litke

There are certain things that cause me to lose sleep at night. Sometimes it’s petty little stuff that I blow out of proportion such as paying to have hundreds of stations on satellite TV, yet I only watch four or five channels. Shouldn’t I be entitled to a discount? Other times it’s more serious matters–legal questions– that cause my insomnia. Legalities that have caused me mental anguish include such questions as should our federal government allow convicted criminals to enter Canada? It’s a no-brainer until cash, power and prestige are thrown into the picture. To complicate the matter, what if the individual involved claims he was wrongfully convicted in a U.S. smear campaign? Furthermore, should that person be allowed to enter Canada after he renounced his Canadian citizenship in order to obtain the title of Lord overseas in England?
Last week, a far more complicated matter became the source of more furrows in my forehead and dark lines beneath my eyes. Blissful sleep vanished as I pondered a question that may have a far-reaching effect on the Prairies and the people that inhabit this region. The question that I asked myself night after night was simple: Can a gopher fly? I will be the first to admit it seems like an absurd question, but it may be quite legitimate in a couple million years from now, and it all began with a trip to the Cypress Hills. During a drive to the Bench, my wife had a vision, I thought it was a hallucination. I thought she was reverting to the 1970s and was under the influence of LSD (Litke Self Delusion) when she said, “Look, there’s a gopher on a fence post.” Readers should remember that this is the mother of a daughter who spotted a dead pig on a tractor after being fed Gravol pills to combat car sickness. To my surprise, when I looked at the fence I too saw a gopher perched on a post like a hawk on the hunt. As I stopped the car and prepared to photograph the critter, it headed down the post like a squirrel that knows there is a .22 rifle aimed in its direction. Then it made a graceful leap to the ground upon reaching the second strand of wire and disappeared.
This strange scene caused me great consternation as I lay in bed and thought about Darwin’s theory of evolution and the survival of the fittest. It was then that I realized gophers may one day dominate the food chain in the Prairies if we do not launch an immediate campaign to eliminate gophers, at least the intelligent ones that have learned to climb fence posts.
Assuming the smartest gophers propagate and slowly evolve over many millennia, the cute little animals will develop webbed skin and one day start gliding like flying squirrels. That will eventually give way to gophers that shed their fur in favour of feathers, as was the case with lizards that became airborne and evolved into birds. When the first gopher realizes it is no longer limited to the earth’s surface, mankind will be in peril.
Anyone who has watched a gopher knows  they like to supplement their vegetarian diet with meat, even if it is a relative that became a traffic statistic while crossing a road. Upon gaining control of the skies, gophers will undoubtedly begin looking for protein. Due to their sheer numbers and co-ordinated ground and air attacks, their oppressors will become the gophers’ food of choice. Children whose forefathers had once drowned, clubbed and snared gophers will be forced to run for their lives as the creatures swoop down like vampire bats and go for the jugular
I can hear the skeptics scoffing at such an idea and saying it  will happen when pigs fly. Well, as my daughter knows all too well, if a pig can die on a tractor, it is only a matter of time until pigs learn the principles of powered flight and make the jump from land-based farm equipment to aircraft. As any farmer knows, pigs are not dumb animals . . . and neither are gophers that climb fence posts to watch for predators and prey.
I may be sleep deprived and paranoid, but I feel the need to buy a rifle and plenty of shells. Yes, I will be watching the fence posts everywhere I go because I have seen the future; now I know.