Here we are, just barely into the new year and a long way away from spring (this photo was taken in summer a year and half ago), and the first little sentries have emerged from their burrows to check out what's happening in the snow-covered upper world and grab a bite to take back below, to the nurseries full of new pups and proud mothers, safe from the fox and coyote that currently own the wintry Colorado landscape.
We've shared our property with several colonies of these little subway diggers for two and a half years now, and last year, which was exceedingly dry, they discovered and ravaged my behind the house vegetable garden that I imagined I'd skillfully managed to conceal. Which means: this year, fencing. There just wasn't enough for them to eat in the other two acres of the property, and what there was had dried into tasteless, barely nutritious scrub, and as the heat persisted, they ventured closer and closer to the house, eventually discovering our trove.
These guys are considered pests by the farmers and ranchers in the area, but we've grown attached to their chattering signals, their gossip, their warning calls and seemingly hysterical laughter. And we recognize that they're a keystone species - who knows what sort of hardpan we'd be dealing with if this crew wasn't constantly engaged in aerating excavation work. We don't mind sharing the land with them, but it would be nice if they left us just a small portion of what we're able to coax out of these arid and alkaline soils.
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