Two Weeks in Meeteetse, Wyoming

Meeteetse is hallowed ground when it comes to the story of the black-footed ferret. It was thought to be extinct until one fine autumn day in 1981, when a dog named Shep killed a critter near his food bowl at the Hogg ranch. John Hogg didn’t think anything of it, and threw the carcass over the fence. Fortunately, John mentioned it to his wife Lucille, who salvaged it and brought it to the town taxidermist, who promptly identified it to be a black-footed ferret. Thus the story began…

This last wild population of 129 ferrets was reduced to a mere 18 by 1987, having been virtually wiped out by plague, and possibly some canine distemper. The ferrets alive today can be genetically traced to this original 18, including the rather virile Scarface, who almost single-handedly populated the captive breeding program.

So when word came that USGS biologist Dean was looking for two volunteers from the Conata Basin crew to work with him for a couple of weeks in Meeteetse, I jumped at the chance.

The project: examine the long-term effect of plague on white-tailed prairie dog colonies in Meeteetse, by measuring burrow density and activity. The data might also be used to evaluate prairie dog habitat for ferret re-introduction. All this sounds a lot more complicated than the actual work itself, or I should say, my contribution in data collection was pretty straightforward. My job was simply to walk in a line with a rolatape wheel and count the burrows in a 3 km wide section. If fresh scat were present, that would indicate activity and I kept a record of those numbers too.

Ultimately, there were three of us from Conata who worked the Meeteetse crew: Erin, Jordan and yours truly, plus two newbies. And for one week during that time, we were treated to the grand company of Geri and Lou. Geri worked with the Conata field crew back in 1999, so we traded tales and battle scars about working in Interior, South Dakota. In fact, it was the two notorious driving “incidents” during the ‘99 field season that led to the compulsory four-hour defensive driving course that my field crew had to painfully endure. Lou was among the core team of four wildlife biologists (including Dean), who worked with the ferrets when they were re-discovered in 1981. Every time we transected a particular colony, Lou had a story, photo or a historical tidbit to add.

Along the way, we also met a rare progressive rancher, developing a doctorate syllabus about the integrated approach to wildlife management; an oil consultant convinced that his wells produce not an ounce of carbon emissions; Emily, the daughter of John and Lucille Hogg, who runs Lucille’s café in town; Scott, who is tracking 10 packs of wolves from Thermopolis (one hour south of Meeteetse) to Yellowstone; plus a group of hunters merrily shooting up one of our colonies, where they’ve hunted for the last 15 years.