A 79-year-old man from Santa Ynez, California inadvertently started a brush fire on his ranch while trying to kill gophers with bombs.

The rancher will have to pay for cost of extinguishing the one acre fire, which was attended by one fire helicopter, three engines, a hand crew and a Battalion Chief, as he failed to follow safety precautions that came with his gopher bombs.

According to Captain Agapito of the Santa Ynez fire department:

Those bombs have instructions that you are supposed to clear grass and brush from the area where you will be placing them. You are supposed to light them, drop them in the gopher hole and cover them up. Then they release the very effective poisonous gas.

Looks like the gophers won that round.

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