Kids Should Know About pd's

Today we went with John to Walden's high school to listen to his talk about prairie dogs. Most of the kids here come from rancher families, who generally greatly dislike pd's, although sometimes it just seems they dislike them on principle. Pd's have the bad rap of breaking horses and cows legs when they step into their burrows, which would then mean that the rancher would have to kill the animal. In reality, there have been no documented cases of such incidences occurring, but ranchers sometimes just need an excuse to shoot the dogs; never mind that most of them are threatened, or even endangered.
The talk started out with much the same response, but by the end, John seemed to be having somewhat of an impact. My personal favorite part of the discussion was the effects of polyandry, which is when a female mates with more than one male. In prairie dogs, that accounts for the female having a larger litter size, thus increasing the likelihood of her genes being passed along. Very interesting.
After the talk was finished, we headed out to the field and a long day. Amy was in a car at the barn, and I headed resolutely up to my tower. It was especially foggy, and it didn't lift until past noon, which is an odd occurrence in itself. The day was a long one..I stared irritatedly at OKun for a lot of the day, as it kept poking its head up and down. My spread traps seemed to be having little affect, may have to go to a surround soon..did manage to catch two birds; one male and one female horned lark, which is always fun...