Here is a photo of one of my most recent engineering inventions. It is called the Gopher Scope. At the end of the 30 foot long vacuum cleaner hose is a small camera and two headlights. The video seen by the camera is displayed on the 7 inch monitor. The user inserts the camera end of the scope into the gopher hole and pushes it along the various passage ways looking for the gopher. Several methods have been suggested for disposing of the gopher after he is found, but thus far most of them have seemed too gruesome for a mixed audience. I got into a discussion the other day with a doctor who performs Colonoscopies using a Colonoscope. I told him I had made my own scope that I used to catch gophers. He was not really interested, even though I told him that mine had two head
lights and his only had one. However, one aspect of the scope really caught his attention. I told him that while I was inside the gopher tunnels I would often become disoriented because the tunnels were round and I couldn't tell which way was up or down. His eyes lit up! "I have the same problem inside the intestine!" he exclaimed. Sometimes we can see a puddle of standing water inside the intestine and we can use that to orient ourselves. After that we had a great visit.
Did you market this?
ReplyDeleteNot yet. My first idea was to take it to people's homes where they had a gopher problem. I would set up a table in their front yard and for a mere $100 I would allow them to "hunt" the gopher. It would be like playing a computer game.
ReplyDeleteWe still have to perfect a method for killing the gopher after we find it in the hole. The methods that have been proposed thus far are far too complicated to describe on this Blog, but they involve CO2 Gas, compressed air, 22cal shells, and bicycle pumps.