Prairie Dog (At the Zoo)

A special habitat I wanted to investigate because of “My Antonia,” in which observation of the surface life of prairie dogs – an exotic species that must be somewhat new to the world – underlines the great mystery of these animals’ underground cities, called “towns”, about which I guess nothing was known. Now we know all about them, for all the good it does us and them, and we can walk around these “towns” and stick our heads up, or our childrens’ heads up, in the Plexiglas bubbles and pretend we are part of the exhibit. (I didn’t capitalize Plexiglas: the machine does.)

 

            The prairie dogs rear up and stand erect and dramatically alert, like tuning forks, each one pointing in a different direction. There are the “spotters”, a very high proportion of the total population, and then there are the others, who mill around, feed, and then pop up suddenly and become still, spotters. Are they less likely to attract predators if they stand there like that? They are precise little machines, the way they rear up and hold the pose. Modern dance. Could some hawk actually swoop down and pick them off? The concrete tunnel under their enclosure makes you feel like a child, confined in a magic world with blind turns. Then you’re out of there before you know it. What are you supposed to learn by standing up in the Plexiglas tube, inside a ring of alert prairie dogs? Can you scan the horizon with them?