I’m writing this from Colorado, the home of some of the country’s most breath-taking mountain vistas. But while I’ll never forget the time we spent enjoying those views, I’ve fallen head over hills in love with a relatively flat open space about a 5-minute walk from my son’s home.
Looks pretty nondescript doesn’t it? It’s not, though. It’s filled with wildflowers and birds, some familiar but many others unknown to me. But more than that, it has a prairie dog town beside one section of the path that rings the area.
What can I say? I’m sucker for prairie dogs. I know some people (unfairly, I think) consider them vermin, but I don’t. Each time my granddaughter, Lauren, her dad’s dog Lumpy, and I approach the outskirts of the town, the same prairie dog sounds the first alarm.
His call reminds me of a study of prairie dog communication, specifically how the animals used different calls to signal when the researcher came alone and when he came with his dog. Did this prairie dog, who Lauren calls Bill for reasons unknown, recognize Lumpy from his previous daily walks by with my son? Is the call I’m hearing the same call my son hears? Or do one of those barks I hear translate “older unknown human female with small female child approaching”?
I have no idea. What I do know is that the call is picked up by prairie dogs up the line, causing babies to scamper and dive into the nearest burrow only to pop up for a look-see a few seconds later.
So while they do recognize that we’re something worth paying attention to, they’ve also figured out some way to determine that we pose no danger to them.
I like to think this is because Lumpy is indifferent to their presence and Lauren and I are enchanted by them. But maybe it’s just because they think we look funny.
Love, love, love this! 😎