A troupe of self-described "environmental experts and old farts" are at their regular table at Skaets Steak Shop, the tiny cafe where they meet at the beginning of each day for breakfast and banter. The coming of spring has brought to the table a new topic to replace, for a moment, the wheat and the weather: the fate of a colony of prairie dogs that has taken up residence in the Kansas State Fairgrounds, right where the town of Hutchinson intends to build a couple of new baseball fields.
There is some consensus here, and indeed throughout Hutchinson, about what should be done: "Kill the damn things." But the men at Skaets disagree somewhat on tactics. Earle Smith, a "semiretired" carpet retailer, proposes opening the fairgrounds to hunters and charging "a dollar a dog." Bill Moran, a fully retired manager of a grain company, thinks they could be a fine addition to the menu at Skaets. And Don Collins Jr., who still has a few years before retirement, looks through the window at the cold rain and suggests that the offending rodents might make excellent earmuffs.
These exterminators, however, face some stiff opposition. In recent years, prairie dogs have enlisted formidable allies. Scientists call prairie dogs a "keystone" of the Great Plains ecosystem because their dens serve as motels for many other mammals, insects and even birds. Researchers are beginning to discover how their barks and squeaks constitute one of the most complex languages in the animal kingdom. Animal-rights advocates defend the winsome fur balls: they are, in the words of a Hutchinson member of the Doris Day Animal League, "delightful to watch, even if they are of the rodent form."
The story of how these groups clashed and ultimately settled their differences offers a glimpse into precisely the kind of grass-roots democracy the Founding Fathers might have envisioned--had they had the imagination to conceive that a rodent the size of a can of tennis balls could embroil Hutchinson in its most explosive animal-rights debate since last summer. (That was when a dog was accidentally dragged down Main Street from the back of a pickup truck.) The ruckus erupted earlier this year when the city decided that a patch of grass at the back of the fairgrounds was perfect for building two new practice baseball diamonds. Perfect, at least, until Bill Moyer, Hutchinson's parks superintendent, spotted about 75 squirrelly brown mammals popping in and out of burrows and mowing the lawn with their teeth.
Cynomys ludovicianus (known locally as sod poodles) have traditionally been viewed as pariahs of the prairie. They are detested by ranchers because their holes can snap the legs of livestock like dry twigs and their fur plays host to fleas that sometimes carry the plague. (Prairie dogs have infected 24 people in the U.S. in the past 27 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.) They are so unpopular that for decades the Federal Government has conducted poisoning campaigns to eradicate them from rangeland. Several rural communities even hold contests for "sport shooters," who find the animals stimulating targets because varmint-hunting cartridges disintegrate on impact, causing the dogs to explode into "red mist," a cloud of blood and vaporized rodent parts that offers hunters IVG, or instant visual gratification.