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?
