DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker tells it this way, and I'm just the one passin' it along. Now, you want to talk about a creature that once ruled the Texas plains in numbers that'll make your head swim, let's talk about the prairie dog. Small burrowing rodent.
That's the official description. But friend, there is nothing small about the story. Estimates — and these are real estimates, not campfire exaggeration — once placed the Texas population of prairie dogs in the billions.
Billions. With a B. The kind of number that makes you squint at the horizon and try to imagine the ground itself moving.
They got their name, according to the marker, from their quick sharp barking and their wagging tails. A little rodent, sounding off like a watchdog on the open range. A vegetarian, too — related to the squirrel and the ground hog — which means all that noise and drama, and the critter's not even out there hunting anything.
Just living. And the way they live — now that's where it gets craftily interesting. Prairie dogs build L-shaped burrows, fifteen to twenty feet long or more.
That's a serious piece of underground architecture. And here's the part that surprises most people: those burrows are seldom connected to the others in what they call a town. Every family, its own tunnel.
A whole city of neighbors who don't share walls. Declared pests to agriculture and range — that was their fate once the Old West started filling in. The billions thinned.
The towns shrank. And by March of 1964, a town was established right here in Scurry County, set aside deliberately, to preserve a remnant of a vanishing species. The creature that once stretched across Texas in numbers beyond counting, now held in trust on a patch of ground — just to make sure we don't forget what used to live beneath every step.
What the marker says
Small burrowing rodent once symbolic of Old West. Estimates once placed Texas population in billions. Prairie dogs were so named because of their quick sharp barking and wagging tails. A vegetarian mammal related to the squirrel and ground hog, their homes are craftily built L-shaped burrows, 15 to 20 feet or more long; seldom connected with others in their "town". Declared pests to agriculture and range, town was established March 1964, to preserve remnant of a vanishing species. (1968)