OKLAHOMA COUNTY (KFOR) – Darra King Roberson starts her mornings not long after daylight and often ends them just before the sun goes down.
“Those mounds over there are really fresh,” she points out.
Shovel in one hand, traps in the other, she is Oklahoma’s self-titled Gopher Girl.
Describing the damage these prairie yard pests can do, Roberson says, “They dig along pipes and buried wires. They get up underneath your house. They’ll push dirt up under your bathtub.”
Her uncle had no idea what he was starting when he asked Darra and her sister as teenagers to help him out with a few traps.
She recalls her uncle and father both telling her, “‘Darra, you’re going to have to learn how to set these so you can help us.’ I was like, ‘Okay!'”
That was all it took.
Nothing else really trapped her after that.
“I just thought it was so fun,” she smiles.
Darra admits she was a sleepy student in school.
A short career in banking didn’t work out either.
So she went back to what she knew, getting serious about her gopher trapping business in May of 2021.
Gopher Girl is a one-woman, specialized pest control concern with a slightly feminine – note the pink flag markers – feel.
“The best part,” she admits, “is pulling out the gophers.”
Her notebook is full of appointments all over Oklahoma County.
She’s either checking traps or setting them all day long.
“Eighteen houses a day,” she boasts. “On a light day, I’ll do 12.”
The gophers she traps are the unwitting co-stars in a unique string of selfies she shares on social media.
“I like to show them to my customers,” she says.
After that, Darra packages them up and ships the carcasses off to coyote trappers who order them.
Nothing goes to waste.
No opportunity to promote her business is ever lost.
“When you see gopher mounds in your neighborhood, who you gonna call?” she quotes. “Gopher Girl!”
The gopher trapping business is booming for Roberson.
She’s recently hired a secretary to help answer the phone and book new clients.
For more information, you can visit her Facebook page by clicking here.