Outdoor Notes

Wyoming and federal biologists are continuing to dust thousands of prairie dog holes on 3,000 acres of land near Cody in hopes of killing all or most of the fleas found recently to be carrying bubonic plague. The fleas are associated with the prairie dogs that live with the only known colony of black-footed ferrets, one of North America’s rarest mammals.

Some prairie dogs have died of the plague--a disease common to prairie dogs--but so far no known plague-caused ferret death has occurred. The dusting team has dusted 33,000 holes and has 100,000 to go.