in the rolling hills of south dakota lay prairie dogs that never stop talking with each other with their distinctive high pitch chirps. they warn each other of predators, when the coast is clear, and many other ways in which we don’t fully understand to this day. some prairie dog towns can consist of hundreds of individual lives that are all connected through their underground tunnel system and sprawl out for miles under the short lush vegetation above ground. their lifespan is very short due to predators like the black-footed ferret which prey solely on the prairie dog. their mode of attack is through infiltration of these tunnel systems. in the night while the prairie dog burrows into their nest, the black-footed ferret hunts by entering the tunnel system and strategically taking out entire families one by one and takes over whole sections of tunnels, all under the prairie dogs’ noses. the normal lifespan of the prairie dog is only three to four years
the black hills are soaked in rays of sunlight in one hundred degree heat, the dried blood of the sioux nation, and squashed prairie dogs on the side of the paved roads from travelers and locals alike. with bulbous thunderclouds developing off in the distance, coyotes and hawks also prance in-between the herds of buffalo that scatter the cracked earth
