SRF Heavy Industries

This one time I was out on the prairie in the department’s secondary (and therefore crappier) blind, checking the mixing board and the microphone and speaker hookups, contemplating the end of my academic career. I had shade, I had a misting fan, I had a cooler full of icewater, a five-pound bag of nutritionally balanced (for humans) trail mix, and a somewhat smaller baggie of my own special blend of herbs and spices. And the video cameras.

Prairie dogs have a language. And they talk. When we’re giving presentations and writing articles for publication, we cast it all into the most conservative language ever, falling over ourselves to back it off to “calls” and “signals” and, at the edgy, risky end, “language-like behavior.” But they effin’ talk. They have as many nouns as you think a prairie dog might need, plus a couple, and when they see something new, the first one to spot it makes up a new word. If it’s a variation on an old word, say, you start with “human,” you get words like “huge human wearing yellow” in which you can still hear “human” if you try.

The reason I was in the secondary blind is I was way off our usual sites. I didn’t want to taint one of our research towns or even a control town, though it was hard enough to keep everything pristine enough for our purposes anyway. We weren’t exactly operating in secret. We keep getting written up in popsci outlets, and every Chomsky- and Wittgenstein-quoting wannabee science tourist comes out to visit. Also our permission to study dog towns comes from whatever rancher has prairie he doesn’t have an immediate use for. Until he changes his mind. It would be different if we could convince the little bastards to stay on protected public land, but those lands, while not necessarily shrinking, keep having the mineral rights leased out from under them, and that means all of our laid-back, fun-loving prairie dogs have to come up for words for “Holy-@#^&!in-Jeez-run-it’s-a-backhoe” and “-sample-drill” and “-ground-penetrating-radar-unit” and, occasionally, “-gusher.”

I hate it when the Republicans, pockets loaded-to-dripping with oil-squeezin’s, are in charge. There. I’ve said it.

I’d been out here for a week, recording samples of everything they might say to make sure the dialect was the same as what we’d picked up about fifty miles to the south. The stuff I had already prepared before I thought maybe the usual problems were bad enough, and while I might be throwing away my career, I shouldn’t be contaminating anyone else’s work. It’s tough to listen with the ear of a prairie dog, but there were some differences. I rerecorded the calls that were different. I added a few new ones to cover the gaps. But I was just working with the basics anyway.

And then I spent maybe forty-eight hours straight in Earl’s studio, distracting him with enough weed that he’d forget to keep trying to put his hands all over me. Though when he finally clued into what I was doing on the second day, his help was invaluable. And he even kept his hands to himself.  It was Earl’s idea to mix up a rhythm track based on sample noises of wind in the grass and distant sounds of cows mooing and other animal noises and miscellaneous bits and pieces.

And this one time, out in the prairie in our secondary, crappier blind, right at the bright golden hour of sunset, I set up the cameras. And then I cranked up the amp on the portable stack and played them my poem:

[distant and soft] Deer-colored-human-with-box
[louder] Deer-colored-human-with-box
[louder] Deer-colored-human-with-box
Windstorm keep-low
Windstorm keep-low
Windstorm keep-low
All-clear! All-clear! All-clear!
Run! Run! Run! All-clear!

Rain-come water-high
Move-the-babies
Rain-come water-high
Move-the-babies
Rain-come water-high
Move-the-babies
All-clear! All-clear! All-clear!
Run! Run! Run! All-clear!

Scorpion, fast coyote, hawk-aloft [hawk cry]
Freeze!
Scorpion, fast coyote, hawk-aloft [hawk cry]
Freeze!
Scorpion, fast coyote, hawk-aloft [hawk cry]
Freeze!
All-clear! All-clear! All-clear!
Run! Run! Run! All-clear!
All-clear! All-clear! All-clear!
Run! Run! Run! All-clear!

Deer-colored-human-with-box
[softer] Deer-colored-human-with-box
[quiet and distant] Deer-colored-human-with-box

By the time I was done, there were maybe five hundred of these guys out of their burrows and blinking in the setting sun. There was a cry I was picking up on the mics, and it was pretty much just a handful of dogs barking “all-clear.” And as they started to lose interest and wander around, I played it again.

And then there was a thousand of them. Or more. And the way they would freeze and run at the right times looked like a kind of dance. And according to the mics near the burrow entrances, some of them, on the third repetition, were singing along….

And when it was over, “all-clear!” “all-clear!” “all-clear!” …

I started turning off the gear and packing it away. I left the mics and the recording gear for last — except for the video cameras, which I would have to go collect. But right before I unplugged the headphones, I heard from one distant mic:

Scorpion, fast coyote, hawk-aloft
Freeze!
All-clear! All-clear! All-clear!
Run! Run! Run! All-clear!

Maybe I’ll go back soon some Friday for Open Mic Night.

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