Chesapeake Has a Warm Spot in Its Heart for Prairie Dogs -- North Central Texas -- But Relatives in the Bakken

Link here.

This tale of the stray Burleson prairie dogs has a happy ending.

A small colony of the critters was living in a vacant field on a proposed natural gas drilling site near the city golf course and an area targeted for economic development known as Old Town.

How they got there is a mystery, since they are not native to North Central Texas.

Perhaps a former property owner brought the squirrellike rodents to the 45-acre field. Maybe they were someone's escaped pets.

However they got there, they coexisted with their neighbors for years until the city wanted to develop the area and Chesapeake Energy wanted to drill six wells.

But instead of exterminating the 16 prairie dogs that called the field home -- using poison, for example -- Chesapeake thought of a better plan and decided to hire a wildlife consultant to help them relocate the colony back to their natural habitat in West Texas.

I grew up with prairie dogs in North Dakota. As kids, we loved to chase them in the North Unit of Teddy Roosevelt Park. We could never catch even one prairie dog.

I'm impressed that Chesapeake caught 'em all. Well, actually, the "Prairie Dog Lady" caught 'em and transplanted them.

That's when Lynda Watson, known as the "Prairie Dog Lady," got involved.

Watson, who lives near Lubbock, has relocated prairie dogs for 30 years and says she relocates about 4,000 animals a year.

What a great story.