A kind of squirrel. See quotation 1845.
1805. Yesterday the Prairre (sic) dog and Magpie, sent by Capt. Lewis, arrived at the City of Washington.—Mass. Spy, Aug. 28.
1805. How Mr. Lewis, or any one, in the least acquainted with classing in Zoology, came to call the ground-fox squirrel a dog, it is indeed difficult to imagine.—The Balance, Sept. 17, p. 304/2.
1807. On their return [they] killed a prairie dog, in size about that of the smallest of domestic dogs.—P. Cass, ‘Journal,’ p. 37. (N.E.D.)
1812. The Prairie dog, or Squirrel, is a great curiosity. It lives in burrows, or as they are commonly called towns.… These towns are to be found in the large prairies about three hundred miles west of the Mississippi, and are frequently more than a mile in length.—H. M. Brackenridge, ‘Views of Louisiana,’ p. 58 (1814).
1814. I happened on a village of barking squirrels or prairie dogs. My approach was announced by an incessant barking, or rather chirping, similar to that of a common squirrel, though much louder.—The same, ‘Journal,’ p. 239.
1817. I immediately conceived it to be, what it proved, a colony of the prairie dog. (Note.) A species of sciurus, or squirrel, not described in the Syst. Naturæ.—John Bradbury, ‘Travels,’ p. 73.
1823. The prairie-dog villages we had observed to become more frequent and more extensive, as we approached the mountains, and we had now constant opportunities of contrasting the stupendous elevations of the Andes, with the humble mounds cast up by this interesting little animal.—E. James, ‘Rocky Mountain Expedition,’ i. 498 (Phila.).
1823. With us the owl never occurred but in the prairie-dog villages.—Id., ii. 37.
1834. Hawks and prairie dogs do very well, but there is too little meat about a terrapin.—Albert Pike, ‘Sketches,’ &c., p. 55 (Boston).
1845. The prairie-dog is something larger than a common sized gray squirrel, of a dun color; the head resembles that of a bull dog: the tail is about three inches in length.—Their food is prairie grass.—Joel Palmer, ‘Journal,’ p. 21 (Cincinnati, 1847).
1846. For a detailed description of the animal, see Rufus B. Sage, ‘Scenes in the Rocky Mountains,’ pp. 109–10 (Phila.).
1862.
| All quiet now along the Platte; | |
| No cannon’s heavy booming sound; | |
| A prairie-dog, in size a rat, | |
| Stands picket on a gravelly mound. | |
| The foe is lurking in the thicket; | |
| The sentinel stands firm and staunch; | |
| A flash—a whiz—O where’s the picket? | |
| Why, he—the cuss,—vamosed the ranch. | |
Rocky Mountain News, Denver, May 10. |
1866. The little prairie dogs—comedians of the waste—sit crowing on their mounds of earth, until we drive close up to them, when they utter a quick laugh, and with a shout of mockery plunge into their holes head downward, disappearing from our sight with a last merry wag of their tails.—W. H. Dixon, ‘New America,’ ch. iv.
1867. To-day we marched through a prairie dog village…. They are quite saucy, standing up on their little mounds and barking at us until we arrive within a stone’s-throw of them, when they pop out of sight.—Letter of Gen. Custer, April 4: Mrs. Custer, ‘Tenting on the Plains,’ p. 525 (1888).
1867. Once I saw an owl slowly leaving the entrance of a prairie-dog’s home, thereby confirming the statement I have often read in natural history, that in the home of a prairie-dog may be found an owl, a rattle-snake and the prairie-dog occupying the same apartment.—The same, April 8: id., p. 530.
1873. Those who have had much experience in the West tell me they have often seen the rattlesnake come out of holes in a dog-town, but have never seen any prairie dogs come out of the same hole.—Good Words, p. 77/2. (N.E.D.)
1873. It was a “good day for dogs” when we passed, and the little creatures seemed no way disconcerted by the train, but would sit on their haunches, and converse with each other in short yelps, till a shot was fired from the cars, when hundreds of feet would twinkle in the air, and the whole community go under with amazing suddenness.—J. H. Beadle, ‘The Undeveloped West,’ p. 82 (Phila., &c.).
1909. In the State of Texas alone, prairie dogs eat annually enough grass to support 1,562,500 cows. Utterly useless, the little animal is a pest so dreaded that the Forest Service has undertaken his extermination. Poison is killing him, wherever he now flourishes, and another resource of the farmer is safeguarded.—M. B. Buchanan, ‘To Exterminate the Prairie Dog,’ Technical World Magazine, March, p. 71.
