Mar 7, 2006 11:38 pm US/Mountain
Prairie Dogs Cause Big Problems For Little Leagers
by Shaun Boyd
BOULDER, Colo. (CBS4) ―
Little league baseball players are eager to play ball in Boulder, but prairie dogs have taken over their field at Tom Watson Park. The small rodents are leaving 150 little leaguers possibly looking for a new place to play.
"We were disappointed to learn last week that these fields were closed to us," said Steve Brown, head of North Boulder Little League.
The teams have played on the fields for the last four years. Practice was to start next week until the city found prairie dogs running the bases.
"The future of the fields right now is questionable," said Jan Ngeden, director of Parks and Recreation.
She said they tried relocating the rodents by building a fence that goes 3 feet under the ground, but the fields are surrounded by prairie dog colonies.
"We are literally an island in a sea of prairie dogs," Ngeden said.
To make matters worse, this is breeding season for the prairie dogs. The city can't relocate them and for now, they won't exterminate the rodents.
"We're always going to look at new and innovative ways of trying to handle the situation," Ngeden said. In this case, that means filling in holes before every practice and game.
"It's temporary, it's not really a solution," Brown said. "I've had a number of parents say 'Hey, let's march in a bunch of little leaguers in their uniforms in the city council meeting and say hey, where are we going to play baseball?'"
Parks and Recreation said they are going to keep two of the fields open by filling up the holes every night before a practice or game. It also secured a third field for the little leaguers for the spring and summer while it works on a long term solution.
Some people have suggested digging up the boroughs so the prairie dogs will relocate on their own, but IBM owns the park land and has a network of fiber optic cable buried beneath the turf.
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