Squirrel Facts: The Black-Tailed Prairie Dog

The black-tailed prairie dog is a large ground squirrel that is native to prairie grasslands of western North America. Its range extends from Saskatchewan, Canada in the north, to Chihuahua, Mexico in the south, with around half of its population living in the US states of South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming. Due to loss of habitat and extermination efforts by farmers and ranchers, the species currently occupies only around one percent of the land that it inhabited a century ago.

Black-tailed prairie dogs live in colonies that number in the hundreds or even thousands. There was a prairie dog colony in Texas in the nineteenth century that covered 25,000 square miles and may have contained 400 million inhabitants. They excavate elaborate networks of tunnels on flat prairie land. Each tunnel entrance is marked by a mound of earth, created by the burrowing prairie dogs, that surrounds the hole. The mound is useful because it provides a vantage point for the prairie dogs to watch for predators, and also helps protect against flooding. The diet includes mostly grass, supplemented by other vegetation available.

There is a well-known managed prairie dog town in Lubbock, TX. Located in Mackenzie State Park, the Prairie Dog Town was established in the early 1930s and underwent a major renovation in 2004. It now includes a pavilion and viewing area and interpretive signage. I can remember visiting this attraction as a child, and back then it seemed kind of run down, but I would really like to see it with the new improvements.

Scary Dust Storm Video

I found this video of a dust storm that hit my hometown, Lubbock, TX last Monday, October 17. As I have said before on this blog, I grew up in Lubbock, and while dust storms are fairly common in that dry area of North America, I have never seen anything like this.




The buildings that you see in the video are on the campus of Texas Tech University, and I'm guessing that the video was shot from one of the high-rise dormitories.

Here is a news article from MSNBC about the dust storm, and the climate changes that have affected that part of the country and contribute to monster storms like this one. The sentence from the article that floored me is this one:

Lubbock has had just 3.16 inches of rain since Jan. 1.

For perspective, the average annual rainfall in Lubbock is 18.7 inches. The previous driest year has been 1917 with 8.73 inches. Of course, this year is not over yet, but I would say there is a good chance that the city will smash that record. And this year has not just been dry, but this summer was also the hottest on record, both for Lubbock and for the whole state of Texas.

It amazes me that there are still people, like Texas Governor Rick Perry, who still want to deny the reality that there are long-term climate changes taking place. Governor Perry's well-publicized response to the drought has been to ask everyone to pray for rain. Of course, I know that there is nothing the governor or anyone else can do in the short term to change the weather, and there is nothing wrong with prayer. But some long-term policies to try to reduce the use of fossil fuels and encourage cleaner energy technology might help too. Otherwise, we're going to be seeing a lot more storms like this one.

This Man Is Not the Texas That I Know

I have posted several times now about Rick Perry, and I feel that I need to try to explain in more why I find his candidacy for the presidency particularly disturbing and threatening to the values and principles that I and many others hold as important.

I grew up in Texas, specifically in Lubbock, a medium-sized city surrounded by seemingly endless miles of cotton fields, out on the high plains of the northwest part of the state, approximately at the base of the Texas panhandle. I lived in Lubbock from the age of eight until I started college in San Antonio, and after that off-and-on until I finally moved for good to Charlotte, North Carolina at age 33, in 1997.

As I was growing up in the 1970s, I was very much aware that I lived in a conservative area, where Protestant Christianity was the dominant faith and "old-fashioned family values" ruled... probably all the more acutely aware being raised with my sister by a single mother who is an atheist and a liberal democrat. While there were certainly times, particularly in elementary school, when I felt somewhat out of place and self-conscious, I can honesty say that rarely if ever was I genuinely threatened or excluded because of my family's structure, attitudes, or beliefs. Looking back, I have to say that with few exceptions, the prevailing philosophy that I recall in Lubbock was one of political conservatism with regard to fiscal or economic issues, and a general "mind your own business" attitude toward most social issues. The social climate was certainly not one of genuine openness or tolerance, but on the other hand I recall few instances of true hatred, intolerance or bigotry. It's possible I could be wrong about this--time and distance can affect our memories and perceptions--but this is how I remember it.

I know that the description I've given must sound like damningly faint praise, and there are certainly reasons why I am glad I'm not living out the rest of my life in West Texas. But the point is that the toxic aura of radical intolerance and bigotry that I see surrounding Governor Perry is something truly ominous, much different from the more dignified conservatism that I remember from my time in Texas. When I see a man with Perry's popularity, who promotes policies and attitudes that directly exclude and demean anybody who does not share the governor's religious beliefs; who deliberately denigrates science and knowledge when it conflicts with his narrow interpretation of Biblical "truth" and suggests that the children of his state be indoctrinated with his beliefs; who pursues policies that are actively hostile and destructive to the health and well being of the people of his state and beyond... I find it abhorrent that this man might have the chance to do to the United States and the world, what he has already done to his, and my, home state.

Googlemaps Streetview of My High School

I was sitting here in Starbucks wasting time and checking out the Google Maps Street View image of my high school--Monterey High School, Lubbock TX--and... I don't know why it just strikes me as kind of weird that the Street View camera car went by there just as school was letting out and caught a bunch of kids standing around outside the building. It would have been funny if they had caught a group of stoners hanging out smoking in the alley across the street (just pan to the right two clicks and you'll see the alley I'm talking about).

My homeroom was just inside those doors and then up the stairs on the right to the second floor. The homeroom teacher's name was Mrs. Futch. She was a fundamentalist Christian, and one time she showed the class some movie about the rapture that was supposed to scare all of us who hadn't already done so into accepting Jesus as our savior (yes, this is a public school, but remember, it's a public school in TEXAS). This was in the early '80s, before those Left Behind books came out, but in the movie all of the Christians were raptured away, and the ones who were still there had to get this computer code tattooed on them, and then one of the characters figured out that the code really was computer language for "666".

That's about all I remember about the movie.

Oh yeah. Mrs. Futch taught Religious Studies.

Memories, Misty Water-Colored... make that Red and Black-Colored

I recently ran across the blog Totally Texas Tech, which features photographs of the TTU campus in Lubbock--where I spent much of my childhood and early adulthood--taken by the blog's author. I'm sure that we can all think of places that are so important to us, for one reason or another, good or bad, that they have almost literally become part of us. For me, Texas Tech is one of these places. The blog is awesome--it features beautifully presented photos of both the familiar older buildings (such as the ones that I show below), landscapes, and other features, and also new construction taking place on the ever-changing campus. I'm glad that I found this site.