Mike Potts moved up to the western edge of Clayton New Mexico in 1999. Mike and his wife had to move from Bosque Farms New Mexico then because his mother was selling the house she had inherited. Their income was so low that the low price for the ten acre lot and house was more important than just living alongside a real small town.

At first that didn’t make any difference because there was a small VA hospital clinic in the small city hospital. Mike was even able to drive himself all the way down to Amarillo and hit any specialty clinic required.

Because they had moved so far away from where they had been brought up it took them a while to adjust to the northeastern New Mexico environment.

The first thing that had to be adjusted to was the rattle snakes that would get in their back yard. Since the area of New Mexico they were from had a lot of them as well they never got bit by a rattle snake. They just had to be more alert than they were used to being. It helped them heal this problem to start taking care of some wild cats.

Mike had even remembered how his grand father had kept some at his diary farm to hunt down and kill some mice. The lack of feed drove the snakes off very quickly.

It’s just that area of New Mexico had another hazard. The town of Clayton is real close to a couple of cattle feed lots and the flies are just about as thick as low flying clouds. The biggest part of this new hassle stems from the fact that the way insects are can vary from place to place.

 The flies around Clayton are larger and tougher than the ones in Bosque Farms. The style of fly traps used down there didn’t really work up in Clayton. Mike had to learn how the locals fought them so their barn wouldn’t get too clogged and hardly any of them would make it into their house.

That is a hassle the couple have to fight every spring. The cold weather make make you feel a little discomfort. That isn’t half as uncomfortable as having a bunch of flies around your face.

It’s just that last year Mike finally started taking on another major problem. The whole northeastern area of New Mexico still has a lot of prairie dogs. This is another thing  the couple never encountered down in Bosque Farms. The valley down there has had a higher population for a lot longer than the plains up north. The closest problem Mike has had to hassle with are the gophers down there.

That’s why it wasn’t too easy for Mike to understand exactly what was digging the holes across their pasture or what those nice looking animals really were called. It’s just that the prairie dog population got so thick Mike had to really worry bout one of the mares getting hurt.

That was one of the reasons Mike had learned how to poison gophers on their land between Los Lunas ans Belen New Mexico. If one of his horses down there had ever sunk her hoof in a gopher hole as she loped to the barn to get some grain she would probably break her leg and have to be put to sleep.

Mike was able to pick up on another similarity. He saw how the large prairie dog holes where making parts of the pasture wash away just like gopher holes made ditches do the same thing.

Mike figured he could get rid of the prairie dogs just like he would some gophers. It’s just that after the terrorist attack in 9-11 people have a harder time getting some poison. The Federal government has made the license to hard to get Mike had to ask a bunch of locals about how they fight prairie dogs.

One rancher told him suffocation worked. He’d just poor down some gasoline and cover the hole. That sort of weapon was too alarming for Mike’s wife. She said it would make the pasture dangerous. It might catch fire.

Mike got the large book one has to study before taking the required test in order to get the licence. Because of all the things covered in it Mike took too long. When he was ready to take that test the official who gives those test had moved to work down around Albuquerque.

The high price of gasoline wouldn’t let Mike travel that far just to take some test he might fail. It helped him feel better because the wild cats might accidentally get poisoned that way. He had to use his curiosity again around town.

that led him to the idea that just some easy to get poison might work when you stuff the prairie dog hole with a bunch of news paper. That way the animal couldn’t dig back out so fast and would have to try the poison for something to eat.

This last tactic turned out to also be a failure. Not every prairie dog had been hiding in every hole as he went about it. That allowed the free ones to use their instinct and dig the news paper back out to get back into their holes. He got a couple of them but the survivors dug down into just about every hole. It didn’t even help when Mike had tried to fight that. He had stuck some medium sized rocks on top of the news paper.

Like in any real warfare Mike is making himself ready for spring time combat. He is going to act just like America did in World War two when they invented nuclear weapons. Mike is going to find the strongest poison he can purchase and start covering the prairie dog holes with large rocks. That way them horses and wild cats will never be able to poison themselves. Who can say how animals like this are ever going to be able to surrender.