Now that winter is over (hopefully) and spring weather is knocking on our door, it’s time to get out and visit nature and all of God’s creations!
Here in Oklahoma we have a wild refuge that is home to many creatures: American bison, deer, Texas longhorns, otter (that surprised me!), and of course prairie dogs. Here’s some photos from our last visit:
American bison: Big, furry creatures!
Some people exited their vehicles to take pictures of the bison. We did not!
Watching the Texas longhorn cross the road.
Prairie dogs coming up real close to us!
The prairie dogs were not shy around humans at all and were so cute! Did you know that the largest-ever prairie colony in the US covered over 25,000 square miles in the Texas Panhandle? It was home to more than 400 million prairie dogs in the early 1900s! Read about that “dog town” here.
Here’s a video from the American Prairie Reserve that highlights how prairie dogs are an important part of the ecosystem:
DCG
More than 400 million prairie dogs — that must be quite a sight! LOL
Thank you DCG for this very cute post. I especially like the cute prairie dogs which look a little like squirrels.
Great article. I certainly never envisioned that there were that many prairie dogs in existence.
I’ve seen the Bison near Bartlesville. Thanks for the post!
We’ve got a bison farm/ranch less than a mile from our house. I get to see them every day on my drive home from work!
A Rancher in our area decided to take a whirl at raising Bison. It went bad about 2 days in,when he discovered typical Rancher style barbed wire doesn’t even scratch a Bison-it doesn’t even change its stride as it walks through its “fence”. Then,there’s the fact that none of the Ranchers in this area know how to herd the damned things-they just ignore the Ranchers and do what THEY wanna do,until somebody arrives who knows how to drive ’em. Needless to say that was a very short-lived venture. A deciding factor was the fact that the proper fencing for Bison is about 4X the cost of a GOOD barbed wire fence,which is ALREADY too damned expensive. (That’s a real Ranchers words,not mine.)
Good article DCG,very informative and entertaining too.
The government poisons them whole sale in every state they occur. Stop the poisoning!
It’s so, almost therapeutic, to realize there is commenting about our great country without having Washington in the middle of it. Our country is a wonder and a wonderful place to explore for years. My wife and I took to the road for a two week trip from FL to CA. We brought the rent a van back to Enterprise, (they really do pick you up) after 18,000 miles, an oil change and a month later. To Carlsbad caverns, Joshua Tree National Park. Altogether we went to 7 or 8 National Parks, up the PCH to Humboldt down through Yosemite, past the King Redwoods, on to highway 40, (because I-10 was sort of boring), then we saw the sign. “Grand Canyon forty miles”. On to the canyon, then on to Utah, and Colorado. past the four corners and we said oh yea, we have a life. So back to FL where we can’t wait to hit the road again. This time we have an old reconditioned 36′ motorhome! We may not come back this time!