Praying to Prairie Dogs

About a week ago, as I was walking to another interview, I passed a corner lot of dirt snuggled up to a major intersection.  This lot was teaming with prairie dogs; the first I'd seen of these hay-colored, clicking critters since moving to Boulder. Because there was a woman with a stroller walking inexplicably fast behind me, and I didn't want to have that awkward, prolonged pass (for five minutes she would be within ten feet kind of thing), I kept moving. On the opposite side of the intersection I walked over an underpass filled with prairie dog art -  several underpasses here in Boulder have that kind of thing - scenes from nature with a little Indian flair, so I didn't think much of it.

That's the set-up.

A few nights later, while spending some time with a new friend, I mentioned the prairie dogs (the context was that I wanted to try squirrel and whether or not prairie dogs were protected animals).  He told me that when his very religious dad had visited him at school here, they had crossed that same underpass and his dad had remarked that after the apocalypse people are going to find this tunnel and think that we worshipped 'damn prairie dogs' and then his dad went on to criticize the 'monument' erected in their honor.


I found it really funny that there will be post-apocalyptic people and that of all the structures we have made, in all the cities, in all the non-Boulder areas, that they will only stumble on this and believe that this was a holy temple. And the idea of a culture/epoch solely devoted to the prairie dog is pretty funny too.

So that wasn't much of a story...