PREDATORY ANIMALS IN THE WEST 343 



The ravages of the prairie dog on a range are well 

 known. The experts of the United States Biological 

 Survey after a careful study of the question estimate 

 that 250 dogs will consume as much grass as one cow 

 and 32 will equal one sheep. The effect of their work 

 is easily seen about any of their villages, for the grass 

 and everything living is cleared off for some distance 

 around each hole as if done with a hoe. As soon as one 

 vicinity is well cleaned up, the dogs migrate to a fresh 

 spot, thus carrying their devastation over a wide range. 

 On such a spot the grass comes back very slowly. There 

 is a short wiry grass which comes first, known locally 

 as prairie dog grass (Aristida fasciculata), which 

 nothing will eat except when the leaves are young and 

 tender. In time, however, with a few good years of 

 rainfall, the cleared spaces about the village again re- 

 seeds and eventually the old grasses come into their 

 own. 



I know of one such place, a pasture covering several 

 thousand acres, where all the dogs were poisoned out, 

 and in about eight years the grasses had all reseeded 

 and the range was quite as good as ever, barring the 

 holes, which were still there pitfalls for the unwary cow 

 ponies. Of late years stockmen have given the question 

 of the extermination of these pests much attention. 

 Down in the Texas Panhandle the situation became so 

 bad that the stockmen set to work to clean them out. 

 After a few experiments it was found that it could be 

 easily done through the agency of poisoned wheat. The 

 state of Kansas also took hold of the matter, and in two 

 or three years spent about $100,000 fighting the dogs. 

 Whole counties there were almost useless for stock- 

 grazing purposes, while damages to farmers were almost 



