Torrington to Gopher: Get Stuffed!

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A: To show the gopher that it could be done.


Today Anna and I went to Torrington to see the World Famous Torrington Gopher Hole Museum. About an hour's drive north from Calgary city limits, the tiny town of Torrington boasts a little museum filled with little exhibits: taxidermied gophers, dressed and posed in dioramas depicting different aspects of town life.


It sounds a little creepy, but nothing cutes up stuffed Richardson's ground squirrels quite like costumes and well-painted dioramas. And it was busy—at least five different groups went through the museum in the 30-40 minutes that we were there. At $2 per adult and $0.50 per child that doesn't seem like much, but it must add up. A map in the gift shop showed where visitors had come from, including all over Europe, China, and even Iceland.


When the museum was first conceived, an animal rights lobby group found out and started a letter writing protest campaign (clearly PETA doesn't understand that gophers are the opposite of endangered). The museum has a binder full of hate mail from as far away as the UK and Japan, including a drawing of a hand with the middle finger raised and a missive asking the mayor how he'd feel if he were to be stuffed for a "Mayor Museum." I think the funniest ones were people asking why the town couldn't just use readily available fake models in the dioramas. While using fake gophers would certainly diminish the impact of the museum, it made me wonder what countries/states/provinces sold stuffed toy gophers to begin with. The most boring letter was actually the one from PETA, which asked why the museum couldn't feature live gophers and educational displays for children. The obvious answer: where's the fun in that? The binder also contained encouraging letters, many of which were from rural areas in Canada and the US.

After Torrington, we drove to Olds and found the botanical gardens on the Olds College campus, where we saw pretty flowers.


More gopher photos here, many of which are worth seeing, though that's certainly not all of the roughly 40 displays. A few more photos from Olds here.