Tuesday, May 21, 2019

Polar Vortex Victims



The Polar Vortex has claimed more victims in town than just a bunch of trees on campus – it also killed all but one of the prairie dogs at the zoo. These poor little creatures became victims of this crazy weather because they hadn’t burrowed deep enough while hibernating to escape the vicious cold, since the water table was so high from the flooding last summer. The prairie dog that did survive is going to the Baraboo Zoo. Travalon had gone to our zoo and noticed the prairie dog display had vanished, which is a big deal because they are his second-favorite animals after the red pandas. Tiffy was the one who told me what had happened, which is kind of random because she doesn’t even live in town, but her brother-in-law had told her. Sure enough, we found a story online about it. I feel very bad for the prairie dogs, but they were in a hibernation state when they froze, so they probably didn’t suffer. I was practically in tears thinking about the people at the zoo, though. Can you imagine? They see one prairie dog dig out from hibernation… and none of the other twenty appear. Eventually they must have done some exploring and found them all frozen. That is the way of this climate change: big powerful people with a lot of money make decisions that affect it, but the ones who suffer are innocent creatures and the powerless people who love them. Or the powerless people themselves...

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