Officials in the town of Scandia, site of the first Swedish settlement in Minnesota, voted last fall to stop paying $2 per pair of front gopher paws as of Tuesday. Mayor Denny Seefeldt said officials had difficulty verifying where the gophers were trapped and questioned whether spending thousands of dollars on payments was a good use of taxpayers' money, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported.

"I'm not sure how paying for pocket gophers is in the broad public interest," Seefeldt said. "Nobody has come up with a logical argument about why we should spend taxpayer dollars on this kind of issue."

Besides, there are other varmints just as pesky but their capture isn't subsidized, he said.

In neighboring May Township, which has a $1.50 gopher bounty, officials said they tightened restrictions to make it harder for non-township critters to quality for payment, including filling out a form with all the particulars of the capture and a phone number for verification.

"They're not going to get a nickel until we verify this," Town Board Chairman Bill Voedisch told the newspaper.