The Ranch Store

The Ranch Store

Cactus Flat, SD

Reviewed June 10th, 2005

The Ranch Store sits at the northern edge of Badland National Park. Two unisex restrooms stand ready for the attentions of any gender. The first has a daisy wall border and daisy paintings. It smelled clean and like old wood. The second smelled heavily fecal, but it contained a cowboy shrine consisting of a hat, wrong iron candelabra in the shape of an arrow and some other items. It too had a wood floor and a homey appearance.

Prairie dog feed was offered for sale and a dog town full of dirt mounds and squeaking rodents awaits out back behind the giant statue in front. These little buggers are cute as all get out. Currently they are the trendiest pet in Japan. How do they get all the way from the Great Plains to Japan? Japanese missionaries scour the earth signing up prairie dogs for well paying exchange programs that offer free health care, education, generous pay and the chance to chill out with Buddhist monks with bald heads! Actually the truth is a little rottener. Some yokel goes around with a powerful, vacuum cleaner like device, affixing it to a prairie dog hole. The machine sucks out all the prairie dogs it can get. Then, the babies are separated and kept to be sold while the adults are killed, sometimes with poison gas, sometimes with bullets, sometimes by clubbing, sometimes simply left in a disoriented state to be killed by predators. Because there are few federal regulations governing these practices, collectors are virtually free to do as they please. Unfortunately for pet owners in Japan, these cute little buggers are notoriously difficult to tame, often became antisocial, bite frequently are notorious for carrying rabies and bubonic plague, among other diseases. Yeah, the one they used to call "black death." But hey...they're cute as hell right... So anyway, do the dogs and yourself a favor and leave them alone. Prairie dogs act on the prairie environment in tandem with bison to till soil and create favorable conditions for native plants and animals. And if you see any weird looking individual prowling around prairie dog towns with an unwieldy vacuum cleaner thing, find a large rock and...okay, never mind. That would be illegal, and illegal things are bad, bad, bad! Put down the rock. Count to ten. An important thing to note: Americans are no better than Japanese when it comes to inappropriate relationships with wildlife and pet trade practices.

Sorry about the rant! The Ranch store offers a great place to see prairie dogs in their home town, in place where they co-exist peacefully and on their own terms with human beings. Management at the Ranch Store specifically prohibits feeding salty human snacks to the dogs, who can get sick and die more easily than you'd think. Hanging out with the dogs is free. Prairie dog food is sold inside for a buck or two. These critters will beg and act tame, but they aren't.

- Justin Teerlinck

RESTROOM RATING: 7
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