Rodent router man  

Basin inventor gets ground squirrels, gophers  

By TY BEAVER

H&N Staff Writer

April 5, 2007 

H&N photos by Ty Beaver
Tulelake resident Allen Hurlburt stands next to a PERC 412 model at his manufacturing site in Northern California . Hurlburt invented the rodent control device and is marketing it to agricultural businesses and producers.

    TULELAKE — As a young boy, Allen Hurlburt said he would eradicate gophers and ground squirrels in his father’s fields by siphoning exhaust from the family’s Ford tractor into the animals’ burrows. 

   Back then, all Hurlburt got for his trouble were a few kills and a lesson in rebuilding an overworked engine. Now he’s cashing in on an adaptation of that same idea, building, selling and patenting his pressurized exhaust rodent control or PERC machine. 

   “I have more work than I can do,” Hurlburt said of demand for his invention. 

   Tulelake inspiration 

   A Tulelake resident is responsible for Hurlburt moving forward to find a solution to infestations of ground squirrels and gophers. 

   Two years ago, Hurlburt said the resident commented to him that whoever could find a way to effectively and safely eradicate the pests would make a lot of money from those in agriculture. 

   Infestations of ground squirrels and gophers can cause problems and economic losses to ranchers and alfalfa growers. Other methods, such as explosives or grain poisoned with strychnine, are not highly effective and can be dangerous to humans as well as animals that landowners don’t want to harm. 

   Hurlburt took the man’s comment to heart and put together his first machine, using copper tubing, a simple motor, gas compressor and a gas tank. The basic premise was to pump pressurized carbon monoxide exhaust from the motor into animal burrows, providing a quick and safe means of killing them. 

   He tested it out on a bank belonging to Nick Macken of Malin that was infested with gophers. There hasn’t been a sign of gopher activity in the bank since. 

   “Surprisingly enough, it worked the first time out of the gate,” Hurlburt said. 

   Invention refined 

   Since that first model, Hurlburt has continued to refine his invention, using better quality components and adding features to make it last longer. He uses a cooling coil to connect the motor and compressor, preventing the hot gas from damaging the compressor. 

   He also continued to test it out on willing landowners’ property, on pastures and fields as well as lawns and golf courses before beginning to market it commercially in October.

   Now Hurlburt, along with partner Steve Fabianek, constructs two machines a week in two models, selling them to people across the West, from Nevada to Washington . His customers range from those owning a few hundred acres to corporate farms with thousands of crops or groves. Nearly all of Hurlburt’s customers have tried the other methods of eradication with little or no success. 

   About 20 machines have been sold and more are being ordered each week. The attention his machine has garnered leaves Hurlburt hoping that a manufacturer will seek to license his soon-to-be patented device, leaving him more time to pursue interests other than constructing machines for sale.

Steve Fabianek prepares to weld rings on to a pressurized exhaust rodent control, or PERC, machine to hold gas injection rods. Fabianek works with Tulelake resident Allen Hurlburt, PERC’s inventor, to construct and sell the machines to ranchers and farmers for ground squirrel and gopher control.  

 

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