He’s All Over This Underdog

On a lonesome alfalfa field in the shadow of the San Juan Mountains, a little brown head pops up and swivels like a periscope in its hole.

Not far away, Gay Balfour squints hard in the midday sun. “That’s it!” he exclaims, leaping into his boxy truck and gunning it down the field. The head swiftly disappears.

Balfour maneuvers the tank-like vehicle around the burrow, unhooks a large vacuum hose and jams it into the hole. He fiddles with a few knobs and gauges, then pushes a button. The truck roars, spewing smoke and dirt into the sky.

“Probably dug to China by now!” Balfour yells over the din. Then comes a thump, thump, thump. A prairie dog, sucked out of its home at speeds approaching 60 mph, spins up the 5-inch-wide hose, banks off a foam wall and slides into the back of the truck.

Balfour climbs in and examines the ruffled rodent. “He’s a little miffed, but he’s fine,” he says. “He’s thinking: ‘Now how did I get in here?’ ”

For the last 12 years, Balfour and his custom-made vacuum have rumbled across the West, sucking up prairie dogs like so much lint from a sprawling shag carpet.

The animals, which resemble pudgy, barking squirrels, are beloved and despised here. For some, they are as much symbols of the West as buffalo and elk; but for others, they are little more than glorified rats that dig up fields and chew up gardens.

But dealing with them has become a politically charged issue. Widespread poisoning and shooting of the animals is increasingly frowned upon, despite the damage they do.

Balfour, 62, thinks he’s found another way. His company, Dog Gone, plucks thousands of prairie dogs from ranches, Indian reservations, medical centers and housing developments every year.

He says no one approaches his success rate, which he attributes, as he does many things, to a higher power.

“I don’t know why God united me with the prairie dog,” Balfour says, gazing toward the pale blue sky. “All I know is, I’m along for the ride.”

Researchers believe there are roughly 18 million prairie dogs in 12 states, with Colorado having the largest population. Finding humane ways to deal with them has been a growing concern for communities as people encroach on their habitat.

Last year, the Boulder Valley School District in Colorado was deluged with e-mails and letters from around the world condemning plans to poison prairie dogs at its schools in Boulder County.

“It was just amazing. We were inundated,” said Barbara Davis, executive director of operational services for the district. “The prairie dogs were digging up playing fields, ruining the irrigation system and getting onto the school playgrounds.”

The district dropped the idea and instead trapped the prairie dogs and moved them to other habitats. One popular removal method involves flooding burrows with soapsuds, then collaring the animals when they run out.

In 1999, the city of Boulder banned the killing of prairie dogs outright, choosing instead to relocate them. And although it’s still legal to exterminate them in Boulder County, officials try to avoid it. The result has been an explosion in prairie dog numbers, with fewer places to put them. “I have three technicians working six months a year just doing prairie dog removal,” said Mark Brennan, wildlife coordinator for Boulder County. “We have 10,000 to 15,000 acres of prairie dogs in our county now. We had 800 acres in 1998.”

This plethora of prairie dogs has made the last few years Balfour’s busiest yet. He sees himself as more than a mere trapper, more than a real life Carl -- the gopher-obsessed groundskeeper played by Bill Murray in the movie “Caddyshack.”

Balfour said he understands prairie dog psychology, their moods and even a bit of what they are saying when they yelp endlessly.

“You got your sulkers, your whiners, your complainers, your sweet ones and your lovable ones,” he said. “I had a guy say to me: ‘Balfour, you’ve gone too far with this. Just kill them and be done with it!’ But that’s not my mission.”

To understand his mission, a visit to the “blue room” is in order. Under a baking sun, Balfour opened the heavy metal doors to a blue garage near his driveway. Inside, the air was cool and filled with deafening, high-pitched yelps and squeaks.

Nearly 300 prairie dogs, caught in a recent vacuuming mission near Durango, clung to the sides of cages suspended from the ceiling.

Balfour struggled to hear in the commotion. “This is the Cadillac of prairie dog holding facilities!” he shouted. “They yell louder when they don’t know you; a red shirt really cranks them up!”

Balfour, an earnest, gentle man, strolled down the line of cages, smiling at his little charges. He stroked their stomachs and asked what all the fuss was about. A few rolled over and played dead.

For most, this is pretty much the end of the line.

Balfour drives the prairie dogs in air-conditioned trucks to Arizona, Wyoming, Utah and elsewhere in Colorado, where he donates them to the black-footed ferret reintroduction program. The ferrets, numbering just 250 in the wild, are among the most endangered species in the nation. Their chief prey is the prairie dog. Some are fed directly to the ferrets while others are let loose so the ferrets can track them down.

“Even though they are sacrificed to the ferrets, that’s not our long-term intent,” Balfour said. “Once the ferrets are back up, we can release the prairie dogs into the wild and let the two of them work out their own deal.”

Bill Van Pelt, who heads the ferret program for the Arizona Game & Fish Department, said Balfour is his biggest prairie dog supplier.

“A good portion of black-footed ferrets are born in zoos, so you must transition them to the wild by feeding them prairie dogs,” he said. “[Balfour’s] been very helpful in the reemergence of the black-footed ferret.”

Not everyone is as enthusiastic. The Prairie Dog Coalition, a Boulder-based group trying to protect the animals, said prairie dogs are sucked up so fast that many die or are maimed in the process.

“We do not support vacuuming as a method of humanely removing prairie dogs,” said David Crawford, acting director of the group. “Unfortunately, his device holds some fascination for the public, though that dissipates when you consider that prairie dogs are being thrown in the back of a truck with rocks, sticks, snakes and salamanders.”

Scott Dutcher, who heads the Colorado Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Animal Protection, said he’s seen video of the prairie dogs whizzing through the hose and into the back of the truck. “From what I saw, they seemed fine -- more dizzy than anything else,” he said. “We have received no complaints. Common sense tells you that there are no easy ways to get a prairie dog out of its hole.”

Nevertheless, animal rights organizations have picketed Balfour, threatened him and even slashed his tires. But he says 95% of the prairie dogs he catches are unscathed.

“The airspeed is 300 mph, but once they get inside, it’s about 60 for the little ones and 30 for the big ones,” Balfour said with a shrug. “The padding on the truck keeps them safe. It’s better than poison.”

So far, Balfour is the only one using a vacuum. He figures he’s caught 157,000 prairie dogs in his lifetime. And he isn’t cheap. Balfour charges up to $20,000 for a big job, one where he must cover a lot of land and spend several days in the field.

“He has been very effective and has helped us maintain our colony at caring capacity,” said Bill Daily, natural resources manager for the Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch. “If there is reincarnation, he’ll probably come back as a prairie dog.”

Balfour also does work for Kaiser Permanente, where prairie dogs have torn up sprinkler systems and wandered inside buildings.

“We have him for three days to a week and he will get 800 to 1,000 prairie dogs,” said Tim Currigan, director of community and governmental relations for Kaiser in Denver. “After spending a week with him and seeing how he dealt with the animals, I felt comfortable. We could have hired an exterminator and saved a lot of money, but we realized that was not the right thing to do.”

Chasing prairie dogs is just the latest career for Balfour, born and raised in the San Fernando Valley. He has also raced cars and owned a welding shop and sporting goods store in Valencia.

Balfour moved to Cortez, in the far southwestern corner of Colorado, in 1971 after falling in love with the rugged landscape during an elk-hunting trip. He and his wife, Judy, opened another welding business.

Years later, a series of financial problems left them nearly bankrupt. He and Judy, then in their early 50s, ended up bagging groceries at a supermarket.

“Every night I went to bed asking the Lord for guidance,” recalled Balfour, a devout Mormon. “Then one morning, I woke Judy and told her I had the craziest dream -- I just had a dream of how to catch prairie dogs with a giant vacuum cleaner.”

His wife had grown weary of his schemes. “I said, ‘Oh no, not again,’ ” she recalled. “By then, I had had it.”

But Balfour was convinced that this was his big break. He would watch prairie dogs frolic in the fields, barking and sharing greetings by pressing teeth together as if kissing. Sometimes, he whispered to friends that he was working on an “air conveyance” system to catch the creatures. One day, a truck with a vacuum hose rumbled past. He followed it to the local sanitation office and went inside.

“The guy sees me and comes around from behind the desk and grabs my arm like this and says, no kidding, ‘I really want you to buy a vacuum truck,’ ” Balfour said as he sipped ice tea inside a trailer. “It was yellow -- just like in the dream.”

Stunned by what seemed further confirmation of his destiny, Balfour went to a fire station to see a friend. “I said, ‘Ron, you got a 340-foot vacuum hose?’ He took me upstairs and guess what -- the hose was green, just like in the dream,” he said, eyes widening. “The hair stood up on the back of his neck,” his wife said.

The truck was used to suck waste from sewer systems. Balfour, a born tinker, took out a loan and bought it.

He adjusted the air speed of the vacuum, installed the longer hose and added a huge arm to the back of the vehicle to support it. Then he drove the Rube Goldberg-like contraption to a field full of prairie dogs and tried it.

“I worked 45 minutes and caught 23 prairie dogs,” he said. “This was the answer to my prayers.” On his first job, he bagged 750 prairie dogs in one field. Calls poured in. Balfour enlisted his wife, children and grandchildren to travel the West catching prairie dogs with him.

However, his daughter, 40-year-old Cheree Brock, feels bad that they end up as food or prey for ferrets. “It makes me sad that they will be killed,” she said, sprinkling flea powder on a newly caught prairie dog. “At least they are not poisoned and just wasted.”

The animals tug Balfour’s heartstrings as well. There was little Spud, who clung to his pants leg. And Sidey, who earned her name by refusing to look Balfour in the eye, offering coy, sidelong glances instead.

But charming rodents won’t throw Balfour off his game.

“There isn’t a trick a prairie dog can pull that I haven’t seen,” he said. “I understand them. I don’t understand them verbatim, but I know what they’re about.”