Pest extermination method and apparatus

Abstract

Readily portable apparatus for exterminating animal pests, particularly rodents such as gophers which burrow through the ground. The apparatus includes a small, lightweight internal combustion engine, and means for directing the engine exhaust into exterminating relationship to the pests, such as into a burrow or tunnel of a ground burrowing rodent. The preferred engine is a two-cycle engine which burns a fuel/oil mixture to produce exhaust containing smoke which asphyxiates, carbon monoxide which effectively poisons, and intense pressure pulsations which tend to drive a rodent from an underground tunnel, such that the rodent faces the delema of remaining underground and dying from the effects of the exhaust gas or coming to the surface and exposing himself to death in other ways above ground. In the presently preferred apparatus, the engine is mounted on an inverted bowl-shaped exhaust shroud which seats on the ground to direct the engine exhaust into an underground rodent burrow. A second disclosed embodiment has a perforated probe which is pushed through the ground into a rodent tunnel to direct exhaust gas into the tunnel. Both embodiments have provision for connection to a dual outlet hose to be inserted into an entrance to an underground tunnel system for directing exhaust gas into tunnels leading in opposite directions from the entrance.