Prairie Dogs?  What, are those like Jackalopes or something?!  That’s what my cousin thought during her first trip to Colorado, that prairie dogs were some sort of joke animal named so as to confuse visiting Southerners.  But let me assure you, as I assured her: prairie dogs ARE a real thing.  And now that we have that established, here’s a fun fact about prairie dogs for ya…they CLIMB.  THEY CLIMB!  THEY FRICKIN’ CLIMB!!!

RUN!!!  RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!!!

GOD SAVE US ALL…PRAIRIE DOGS CLIMB!!!!

How do I know this?  Because I saw it with my own two eyes…

It all started with my phone call to the next door neighbor, “Hi.  Our dog just cornered what appears to be a sick-and-dying prairie dog in our back yard.  But I have to run the kids to tennis practice so I can’t deal with it right now.  Would you be able to make it ‘go away’ while I’m gone?  Yeah??  You’ll do that for me?!  As soon as you borrow the air rifle from the other neighbor??  Sounds good.  Thanks!”

As a side note, if you don’t have a neighbor like that, you should totally get one.  And also get one of those ones with the air rifle too.

But when I got back home from tennis practice drop off, Good Neighbor was poking around in all the corners of my back yard, air rifle in hand, no prairie dog in sight.

We’re looking at eachother, totally puzzled, when Air Rifle Lender Neighbor calls from the other side of the fence, “It’s over here!  It just climbed the fence and it’s on Good Neighbor’s back porch!!”

Climbed?!  CLIMBED?!?  Oh, gugguggug.  This isn’t gonna go well.

And sho’ nuff.  It didn’t go well.  By the time Good Neighbor and I got around the fence to his yard, we saw the prairie dog running across the patio and CLIMBING up the side of his house.  When it reached the back porch light, it just perched there looking at us.

CLIMBED?!? 

And then the wild west shoot out commenced.  ‘Ceptin that dadgum varmint wouldn’t quit already.  It kept risin up, doin its best zombie apocalypse rendition.

gugguggugGUG!  NOT.  GOING.  WELL. 

PETA please don’t come get me.  I just stood there shuddering and looking away and most likely getting bubonic plague in my open mouth.

Oh, that reminds me, here’s another fun fact about prairie dogs for ya…they carry bubonic plague.

Thus ends this episode of Fun Fact Friday.  Thanks for stopping by.  Happy Week-end Everyone!