It’s prairie-dog hunting season in Colorado!
From June 15 to next February, you may shoot them on public lands, as long as you pay $38.49 for a small-game license. But if you're a landowner, and dogs are burrowing into your turf and your psyche, you may shoot them any old time, like any varmint. Or simply for fun.
All of which, to me, is like announcing the opening day of Bambi season. It may be good news for Elmer Fudd, but it isn’t for me. Or more importantly, for prairie dogs.
Right after I moved to Fort Collins, I began taking yoga classes at the Aztlan Community Center. Every Saturday morning at 8, I’d walk across an abandoned railyard near my house. The prairie dogs were up early, standing sentry at the top for their burrows and barking for all they were worth. Maybe they misunderstood what “downward facing dog” was all about?
For several years, they barked at me, and I barked back, and all was well. Then one morning I spotted bulldozer tracks amidst the weeds, and divots in the place of dwellings. It was the prairie-dog version of Silent Spring, when a vibrant community goes deathly quiet.
Suddenly, my life was less rich.
First of all, prairie dogs are super cute. Colorado Parks and Wildlife calls them “barking squirrels,” which amps up their adorability. Plus, even more than longhorn cattle, prairie dogs define the west for me. I’d spotted dog burrows from an airplane on my first flight into DIA as a tourist. It looked like craters on the moon, but with aliens who resembled Chip and Dale. And they had fetching brown eyes, just like my wife!
I studied up on my new friends.
Did you know that they greet one another with a hug and a kiss? That they have their own language? I learned a few words of Prairie dog. Mostly they say, “Get out of our abandoned railyard!” And they are an ecological lynchpin, providing food and shelter for spiders and snakes, but also for burrowing owls. Which are also cute. Black-footed ferrets eat prairie dog babies, and have been pulled back from the brink of extinction by researchers at Colorado State. And by the prairie dogs themselves.
Prairie dogs live in colonies. Their underground homes are well organized, with designated spaces for nurseries, bedrooms, and bathrooms. Each burrow is home to a dad and several moms—so their offspring get plenty of attention. When they’re not being eaten by black-footed ferrets. Today, prairie dogs occupy only about 4% of the territory they once did. Their modest burrows make human real estate look like the land rush of 1889. Which of course, it is, to the exclusion of prairie dogs.
OK, like all rodents, prairie dogs are susceptible to the plague. But they’re standoffish with human beings, so you’re not likely to get close enough to catch it from them.
One recent yoga morning, I heard a bark. They’re back in the railyard! A prairie dog parent and child cussed me out for invading their territory. I didn’t take it personally. Their ancestors got here long before I did.
My advice is: Don’t shoot. Prairie dogs are probably better neighbors than I am.
