Category: Rodents
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Trying to get close to deer is one thing. There were some animals in that forest that it was wiser not to get close to, and others who thought it might be good to get close to us. Bears were in the first category – we were afraid of them – and luckily not in…
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Modoc County Road 1 runs through the long, narrow Surprise Valley in high desert of northeastern California. It's in a narrow band between mountains and alkaline lakebeds in the valley bottom. In this narrow band irrigation allows agriculture. Sagebrush has been replaced by grain crops. Ground squirrels feel the need to dash across this road…
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Five representatives were ranting and frothing in Congress the other day about how the economic recovery bill included a $30 million earmark for San Francisco mice. Representative Jackie Speier, who represents San Francisco and San Mateo counties, was surprised. She looked into it and wrote something on her findings for the San Francisco Chronicle, a…
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While visiting Santa Fe recently, I read an interesting story in The New Mexican, the oldest newspaper west of the Mississippi. Some visiting Tibetan monks had been asked to bless the prairie dogs in Frenchy's Field, a large city park. A colony of 50—100 prairie dogs lives in Frenchy's Field. An organization called People for…
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The friends I was visiting in Massachusetts had a groundhog in their yard. They saw it regularly, usually grazing the rich growth of plants next to the gate between the driveway and the back yard. Where I live in California, we have no groundhogs, although I have seen their cousins the marmots in the Sierras.…