Beside the Stream

In Colorado, many people hate prairie dogs.  Since they are easy to poison, the acreage tunnelled by prairie dogs is estimated to be about 2% of what it used to be: 98% (or more) of the prairie dogs have already been removed.   Prairie dog tunnels provides homes for burrowing owls, rabbits, tortoises, and many other species.  Since prairie dogs are prey, their eradication has been a problem for predators like kit foxes, eagles, hawks, and literally dozens of other animals who relied on their towns for food.   Prairie dogs alter the landscape and provide a variation in habitat that many landowners dislike.  Buffalo and pronghorn graze preferentially in prairie dog towns, but cattlemen hate ‘em.   

This photo is taken in the midst of a prairie dog town at about 7,500 feet on top of a mesa, a flat-topped mountain, in a vacant lot at the entrance of Fort Lewis College.  All that naked earth in the background is prairie dog territory, and there’s a prairie dog tunnel entrance and mound in the foreground.  The dead thistle at the left is an alien species that grows about 3 feet tall and no one eats. 

Every time I drive by this town, I see prairie dogs doing interesting things and a hawk or two overhead.  I thought it’d be dead easy to get some good photos, but I was wrong.  I spent 45 minutes lying in the dirt on the edge of the prairie dog town, and the only thing I got was windburned and sunburned.  So I got back in my car, and a prairie dog popped out: as a human, I’m a predator, but as a car I’m invisible. 

I saw prairie dogs at two speeds– very very still, and super fast.  See how small this guy is compared to the size of his mound? 

and so beautifully camouflaged that

I couldn’t tell if you could see him. 

There were two prairie dogs that were chasing each other out one hole and into another, scampering along like a streak. 

they’re almost flying

chasing each other close as can be

and here those two kids have all eight feet off the ground at once.

Those kids.  I don’t know where they get their energy.