El Paso 2019: A Cemetery ... Prairie Dog?

El Paso, Concordia Cemetery. January 2019.

My friend, Kate, on a Grand Tour of the Southwest, stopped to visit me in El Paso.

After lunch at historic L&J Cafe, we walked through adjacent Concordia Cemetery.

It delighted me to see a prairie dog-like creature bounding to the entryway of his hidey-hole.

A cheeky little thing, he appeared nonchalant about my presence, affording me several photo opps.

El Paso, Concordia Cemetery. January 2019.

Do you see him?

Colorado: Boulder: Prairie Dog Town

Prairie dog town, outside Celestial Seasonings. Boulder, Colorado. May 2016.

Outside the Celestial Seasonings plant near Boulder is a prairie dog town.

Prairie dog town, outside Celestial Seasonings. Boulder, Colorado. May 2016.

Prairie dogs are, of course, our domestic version of those telenovela characters of the animal kingdom, meerkats.

A little movie here:

There is past melodrama aplenty between these prairie dogs and Celestial Seasonings.

In 1999, someone discovered that the company was poisoning the prairie dog community under the cover of night: 

• Tea Company Agrees to Stop Poisoning Prairie Dogs
• Forced Prairie Reserve

Prairie dog town, outside Celestial Seasonings. Boulder, Colorado. May 2016.

The company handled the resulting outrage gracefully, ceding the land to the prairie dogs.

Boulder County has a prairie dog management program that strives to preserve the native black-tailed prairie dog population while acknowledging the demands of agricultural and business land use.