In the six-page booklet at UC-Davis on the pocket gopher and the traps made to eliminate this beautiful but highly destructive rodent, special attention is given to Zephyr Albert Macabee, a local inventor of a highly successful gopher trap.
The Macabee trap, patented on Oct. 4, l900, with number 659,932, will celebrate its centennial a year from this coming October. To this day, the trap is manufactured under the watchful eye of Ronald Fink at the Macabee family home, which was built in 1895 at 110 Loma Alta Ave.
Although Fink reports that California accounts for most buyers, the trap sells in a handful of other Western states, with sales as far away as Utah. Apparently the industrious gopher is an equal-opportunity pest.
Since 1976, the inventor's granddaughter Joyce Ridgley has worked as bookkeeper and treasurer of the family corporation while Fink, a member of an orchardist family, has headed the operation since graduating from San Jose State University. His mother, Alice Fink, also worked for the company for many years.
In 1957, one of two Macabee daughters, Lucile Evans, wrote, "During my father's early years he was a Los Gatos barber, but found that his health could not stand the nervous strain of that occupation."
After his doctor advised him to take a long period of rest, one of his ranching relatives suggested that he occupy himself with catching gophers. Armed with a pair of pliers and nippers, Macabee soon fashioned a trap with which he caught more gophers than with all other traps.
After producing a few traps, he set out in a horse and buggy to sell to local farmers. A farmer named Jones turned him down abruptly, so he decided to hang a trap on the man's gate post. Soon traps were selling to farmers who said, "I want a trap like the one Jones has." Thus Jones, who turned the inventor down, became his ace salesman.
The trap had spectacular use in Los Gatos, where the gopher threatened to eliminate trees in the Almond Grove District between Bean Avenue and Los Gatos-Saratoga Road. Little by little, more people learned of the trap. It "arrived" the day Baker & Hamilton, a wholesale dealer in San Francisco, ordered five gross of traps.
Los Gatos, California Since 1881
