Lately
my little section of the world involving prairie dogs has been happy. A few
weeks ago the city and one volunteer relocated fifty three prairie dogs from
the town near my house. Today I was
walking down that wonderful trail a bit sad from the lack of prairie dogs, but
happy that they all found a great new home in some other field that is better
size for them.
But
then I saw them. Large tractor like things sitting on the middle of the field
on the tractors there were large tanks with tubes leading down into prairie dog
holes. Men were moving the tubes from hole to hole. A woman walked up to my mom
and me and said that they were gassing the remaining prairie dogs. Turns out
that there were estimated to be sixty three prairie dogs left in the holes that
they were gassing right at that moment. A Lakewood city truck went in front of
us; we asked the man in it to talk with
us, which he did. After we had talked with him for a little while, a small
crowd gathered. I feel bad for the poor guy, having to make a really tough
decision to kill the tiny people and getting yelled at by a bunch of people all
in one day.
The
man was trying to look at all sides of the argument. Prairie dogs being a
keystone species, prairie dogs allowing invasive plants from Europe to grow in
the field that used to be pure short grass prairie, and prairie dogs having too
many tunnels for other animals like voles. I am just happy that he did not bring
up prairie dogs having plague (a complete lie).
The
man said that he had put up signs around the field saying that relocation
efforts were happening and that there was going to be a gassing soon. Everyone
in the small group of people that had gathered said that they never saw the
signs.
I
feel as if the latest death is possibly my fault. If I had not been lazy and
had written about the relocation on my blog or something, then I feel as if
more people would have shown up and helped with the relocation. While only one
person actually volunteered (Marc Ayoub was the one who volunteered, he was the
other person who spoke about the prairie dogs at the city council meeting last
December) I didn’t help because I was out of town when they were doing the
relocations.
Please
if there is anything you can think of to help the prairie dogs, such as
commenting on this post if a town near you is going to/already has been/be
poisoned or killed in any way, or sharing this post to a friend, or just
telling a friend about the prairie dogs and their humanish ways.
I’m
going to stop writing this post for now. My hand is starting to hurt from rapid
typing and I am starting to cry, I’m guessing many of you know how hard it is
to write and cry. Thank you so much for reading this blog, and for loving the
tiny people! I love you all so much, thank you for making me stronger from that
page-view you just gave me! JJJ
