Goodbye P. Dogs

The summer of 2009 is possibly the hardest I have worked in my life. At last count, we trapped some 1,270 individual black-tailed prairie dogs in four months and three trapping sessions. And then there were the nights spent spotlighting, initially for fun, then to help out, and then because two people were needed to hand spotlight out both sides of the truck.

I was entrusted with a research project to call my own. I stuck a leaf blower down 238 burrows, and hiked across PD colonies all over Buffalo Gap National Grasslands and Badlands National Park, with northern harriers, ferruginous hawks and bighorn sheep for company, plus the occasional perplexed tourist or cranky PD hunter.

I learned to make naan and bake two desserts. I played mini golf on National Talk Like A Pirate Day, and hosted a Malaysian makan in my trailer. I dye marked a ferret and trapped a badger, a handful of burrowing owls, a 13-lined ground squirrel, a rattlesnake, and several cottontails. I only mildly molested a large male PD weighing in at a 1490g(!), and scraped road kill off Highway 44 to get hair samples for a flea study. I drove from Wall to Interior with five gallons of gasoline in water jugs the night we found out that our one gas station in “town” started closing early for the Fall. I memorably got cozy with the crew on our second to last night – five in a trailer barely built for three – because both trailers ran out of propane 24-48 hours before the end of the season.

And in my free time, I’ve delved dangerously into André Gide, Joan Didion, David Quammen, David Eddings and Ayn Rand.

I’ve lived a lifetime this summer.