We Can All Do Good

A few months ago a bunch of little children died in a mass shooting in Connecticut. I am sure that most of my American readers heard about that (and some of my foreign readers too) it was all over the news. Also those girls who were locked in this guy’s house as slaves, all over the news. Everything bad that happens on this planet is “all over the news.” Lately I have been realizing that all the good things that happen are barely on the news at all. I bet most of you have never heard that Costa Rica’s power comes 95% from renewable resources and they plan to be carbon neutral by 2021. I bet most of you have never heard about the teenage boy who is working on and succeeding with making prosthetic arms. I bet most of you do not know about this twelve year old girl who is working on making a devise to fix brain conditions.

Because the actioney stuff with death and guns is so much more interesting (not really) all the news channels, and newspapers, and internet news sites have very little about Costa Rica’s energy, teenagers making prosthetic limbs and twelve year olds making brain implants they have so much about death and destruction.

All this about the death and destruction teaches people that anyone just anyone can go out there into the world and do bad. They can call up the exterminators to kill their local prairie dog town, they can litter, they can buy a gun, and they can kill this planet. But what the news does not tell us is that we can also go out there and do good. Every single one of us, not just activists and Girl Scout troops: everyone from little kids to seniors can do their part, from leaders to workers, interns to multi-billionaires. Everyone can do their part in saving the world. You do not need to be special, you can save the world!

If one person reading this picked up one piece of trash and told three others to pick up one piece of trash and only two of those three picked up a piece of trash and told three others soon enough the world would be trash free. Same with donating to charity or giving a homeless person your spare change, your imagination is the limit! I am telling this to quite a few people around the world right now, please just please can one or two of you become a world saver? If you spread the word to save the world please +1 this or comment down there \/ underneath this blog post saying what you did to help this planet. Together we can save the prairie dogs! Together we can save planet earth!!!

Prairie Dog Talk

The other day I was doing one of my weekly walks through the prairie dog town. The prairie dogs seem to be doing well! Not as many of them as there used to be, but it is looking fine!  Then I heard it, a prairie dog just mimicked a hawk call! He (or she) stood up on his (or her) hind legs and opened his (or her) little mouth and I heard a sharp long hawk call! It was amazing! I knew that they had lots of words but not that they would mimic other animals!

                                 

I ran home as fast as I could. I quickly opened up my computer, turned it on, and started researching prairie dog language. There is nowhere on the Internets that I could find anything written about prairie dogs mimicking hawks. It could have been something that they just learned to do but more likely a hawk passed nearby when the prairie dog chirped and I heard the hawk over the chirp. Though I did find this article about prairie dog language It is really neat how humans can hear the difference between two different words in prairie dog speak! Maybe someday we will be able to speak in their complex language! We could communicate with these wondrous beings!

Con Slobodchikoff

Con Slobodchikoff did a lot of work on prairie dog language. He has a special computer program that breaks down noises. He uses it to analyze prairie dog “chees” (chirps).  Here’s how he works: he gets people to walk through a prairie dog town and looks at what the prairie dogs say in response to the people. Though the word for “human” is quite different than the words for other predators, it varies quite a bit from human to human. He had an idea about what the different chirps were; the prairie dogs were describing people! He did a lot of tests with people wearing different colored clothing and of different heights and weights.

Slobodchikoff did another test where he built two wooden towers, each at one end of a prairie dog town. He strung a wire between them. He hung three cardboard cutouts on the wire.   One was a triangle, one was a circle, and the other was a square. The prairie dogs seemed to be able to tell the difference between the triangle and the circle but not the circle and square. He said this is because the triangle looks like one type of predator and the circle and the square look like another type of predator.

What if prairie dogs are much more advanced than humans and have their own computers and buildings and stuff? Maybe they have a whole civilization underground. Would it not be wonderful to know that humans are not alone in being intelligent? Some people even say that prairie dogs worship god. They are really not too different from us; actually they are quite a bit like us! It is amazing to think about and I could spend hours rambling on about how they could be aliens come here to study us or could not even know we are more than an odd stupid humanoid that will attack them; but I think I have filled this post with enough information for now. Again thank you for reading and goodbye!

The Black Footed Ferret

Black footed ferrets

One of the main problems with exterminating prairie dogs is the fact that the loss of prairie dogs ends up killing other animals as well. One example: the black-footed ferret. it completely depends on prairie dogs to survive. It does not know how to make its own home so it uses prairie dog homes. And the only food it eats is prairie dog! For a while we thought black footed ferrets were extinct but then we started finding them hiding for long periods of time in prairie dog homes. Humans captured them and brought them into captivity. We figured out how to breed them and now black-footed ferret populations have dramatically increased. Black footed ferrets are some of the hardest animals to breed in captivity.  The people who caught them did many many studies on how they breed in the wild and tried to make their cages as like that as possible.

It is illegal to kill black-footed ferrets, but if you kill a prairie dog town the black-footed ferrets will die with it. That means that it should be illegal to kill prairie dogs and maybe when the prairie dog coalition and I are trying to get the laws made so you cannot kill prairie dogs we could bring up that argument.

Black footed ferrets are nocturnal and hunt mainly at night; they sneak into prairie dog holes and eat them.

Though they look like domestic ferrets they are a whole different species, just as wolves are a different species than dogs! And cats are a completely different species than big cats such as Cheetahs and how farm pigs are really different from wild boars! 

So one more reason not to kill prairie dogs is to save the most endangered mammal in all of America.

Prairie Dog Day Celebration Was A Success!

This year, the PlainsConversation Center and the Prairie Dog Collation, held a Prairie Dog Day Party on February 2nd. (Prairie dog day (Groundhog Day for the West)). It was a big success! Lots of people showed up, there were lots of fun things to do, and it seemed to spread awareness about prairie dogs!  Most of the activities were for the younger crowd, but as the parents were dragged around to see the cool activities, it seemed as if they were learning a lot themselves.

That morning I got up a little early, and got in the car. My dad and I drove for about 40 minutes. When we got there we both helped set up displays about prairie dogs and the animals that depend on them.  At around nine, people started showing up, and then the crowd kept pouring in. Most of the activities were targeted at the younger audience. There were places where the little ones could plant prairie plants that the prairie dogs eat, there was a pile of coloring books teaching little kids about prairie dogs (though it seemed as if the parents liked it more!), there was a place where someone was helping kids make prairie-themed hats, and there was a person dressed as a giant prairie dog going around and taking pictures with people. There was even a scavenger hunt where you found prairie animals and poop and stuff like that.  It went a little slow: great for the little ones but not so good for the grownups.

One of the things that gathered the most people was the puppet show. The little ones seemed to LOVE it and kept yelling out to the main character—a prairie dog—to watch out for predators. After the puppet show, they brought out some prairie animals that you could pet! They even brought some real prairie dogs! (Not for petting!) 

Once the crowds started thinning out and help was not needed as much, I went on one of the wagon rides down to a real prairie town (human town not prairie dog town). All the people on the ride got to do real chores from that time and meet people that work in the town (fake of course, though the blacksmith was a real one.)  We got to feed the chickens, feed and pet the cows (really scratchy tongues!), and at the end of the tour we got to go and have fresh baked cookies baked in an old wood stove from that time. Unfortunately the cookies had butter in them and I recently went dairy free, so I couldn’t have one.. After that, there was time for us to go and explore ourselves before the wagon went back up to the main place. I went and sat with the chickens. Once I got back to the center of things my dad was tired and we left. 

All in all I think the day was big success! Knowledge about prairie dogs was spread, and lots of people had a great time! Though it might not have had a direct effect on saving the tiny people hopefully the young people there will tell their friends about prairie dogs, then those friends will tell their parents and the prairie dog knowledge will spread around the world!

PRAIRIE DOGS RULE!

Cymbre/Arwen smith

Prairie Dog Day is Soon! February 2nd!

The long weekend is over and Prairie Dog Day is coming soon!  Most people know February second as groundhog day, but here in the west part of America there are no groundhogs! It has been re-named Prairie Dog Day!

For the readers in other countries who do not know of either holiday: Groundhog day is a day where people gather at the base of a hill to watch a famous groundhog crawl up out of his hole. If the groundhog sees his shadow he will get scared and run back into his hole signaling that winter will continue for a little longer. If he does not see his shadow he will not be scared into his hole and winter will end. 

Unlike its cousin the groundhog, prairie dogs do not hibernate and therefore we can not do the whole prairie dog and shadow thing, but lots of schools and environmental organizations are celebrating prairie dog day by teaching children the importance of prairie dogs and hosting parties to celebrate the little critters!

The plains conversation center and prairie dog coalition are doing their parts by working together and educating visitors on february second about prairie dogs and having a bunch of fun activities based on the tiny people.

Killing Puppies

prairie dog: way smaller than bison

Yesterday I was doing some research on prairie dogs.
As I was lazily scrolling down on Google, something caught my eye: some place was selling prairie dogs as pets!
Being the curious eleven year old girl I am, I checked out the website. It had a lot of information on how to take care of prairie dogs and keep them. It said that, because of their social lives in the wild, they make amazing pets that are like overly bonding puppies that never grow up.  The good thing is that they can fit in your pocket! They are so social that they will bond with other animals, even ones five times the size of them! They can even bond with other prairie dogs and their owner. They will jump on a bison the size of a giant compared to them to save their owner. They are just like little kittens or puppies.

So I ask the people who want to exterminate prairie dogs: would you be as enthusiastic about sending a bunch of people with tanks of poison on their backs to kill a whole town inhabited by puppies? Not stray puppies covered in dirt that attack every person who walks by. Puppies that have only harmed six people in the last 57 years? Puppies that eat grass and not other animals? And even if you did, many many dog lovers would stop you before you could pick up the phone.  Many prairie dog lovers are trying to stop you from killing the "puppies" (prairie dogs), but they are not being listened to.

So please please just try and spend a few hours and call up the prairie dog coalition or someone like that and let them tell you how to solve your problems with the prairie dogs or show you that the problems are just in your head.
---Cymbre Arwen Smith

Winter Break is Over, Prairie Dog Blog Had a Sucess

Winter break is over and the original goal of the prairie dog blog has been accomplished, we have convinced the city to not exterminate but relocate the remaining prairie dogs in the Bear Creek Greenbelt. Now that that park is saved it is time to save the city! The next thing that I will do to help the prairie dogs is try to get the city to make a law (or is a law in a city not called a law?) that prairie dogs can not be exterminated, or even just that before any exterminations there must be a period of public comment. Because if you save a city, a state is next, then a country. (Hopefully!) if anyone knows either a lawyer that loves prairie dogs and will help me make a petition or where I can get a template for a petition with all the annoying legal stuff already written on it please do not hesitate to put a link to the template or the lawyer's email address in the comments below or send it to my email. Thanks!
---Arwen/Cymbre