Punxatawney Phil's cousins are worried.

It may be a good day for groundhogs, but their prairie dog cousins aren't enjoying the same popularity. In what may be news to locals who see the critters quite a bit, the Gunnison's and black-tailed prairie dogs are in serious trouble in New Mexico. State wildlife officials aren't taking steps to conserve them, according to WildEarth Guardians. Unique to North America, prairie dogs play ecologically vital roles in grassland and sagebrush steppe habitats.

Two are protected under the Endangered Species Act: the Mexican and Utah prairie dogs. The other three – the black-tailed, Gunnison’s, and white-tailed prairie dogs – have been denied ESA protection by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Black-tailed prairie dogs once occupied 100 million acres within their historic range. In 2004, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimated only 1,894,000 acres still existed; that is a 98 percent loss of occupied habitat. Gunnison’s prairie dogs have lost 98 percent of occupied habitat, dwindling from 24 million acres to fewer than 500,000 acres in 2008.

Prairie Dog Rapture by Anthony Falbo. Photo: NPS.

This isn't good news for New Mexico mail delivery.

Mail delivery in Santa Fe is already a source of anxiety for residents. We've had people call us to say they were misdelivered our mail and they aren't even in the same zip code. Today, we were misdelivered a letter to someone who shares the same house number...but not the same road. This is a common and almost accepted problem here. Well, the latest news from Washington won't help.

Asking lawmakers to lift the requirement that the United States Postal Service deliver mail six days a week, the postmaster general told Congress on Wednesday that massive deficits could--read this as "are likely to"--force USPS to cut out one day of mail delivery. And it won't necessarily be Saturday that is cut: studies have examined skipping some other day when mail flow is light. Such as Tuesday. "We will gladly delay past Tuesday your mail from today."

The post office was $2.8 billion in the red last year. USPS may experience a net loss of $6 billion fiscal year, according to testimony January 28 by the postmaster general for a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee. Total mail volume was 202 billion items last year--9 billion less than the year before, the largest single volume drop in history. And, despite annual rate increases, 2009 could be the first year since 1946 that the actual amount of money collected by the post office declines.

Shh.

Santa Fe came in second on Sperling's annual Best Places to Live index. On the one hand, we totally agree. On the other, we're not sure how we feel about reminding people about our town. There's always a chance that the more it develops, the less like an insanely foreign place this will seem. We like the insanely foreign part.

Image credit: Doreman Burns.

Fire in the sky.

But not smoke, not this time. The sunsets are especially beautiful here in the summer. The air seems ablaze when you look through that portal on the lower right.

Karen Fitzsimmons, according to our daughter, "is one of those artists that when you see a piece of her art, it's nice and then when you see another, it's even nicer, and it just goes on and on."

The Wildlife Center.

Sorry for the posting delay! We were laid low for an entire week by something that closely resembled the flu. Yesterday we took advantage of all the beautiful spring weather we've been having to visit The Wildlife Center. The center rehabilitates injured or hunted animals and either helps reintroduce them into the wild or keeps them safe if they are unable to return to a natural habitat due to an injury or due to being messed up by contact with humanity. The animals are cared for lovingly in a beautiful setting, so don't let the cages depress you. The eagle is Maxwell and the Barred Owl is Rayado. Our second grader was able to do a very good report on raptors after visiting these little guys.

Hello, little friend.

Here comes the hayride.

The hayride, or strawbale-for-seats-on-a-pretty-wagonride, was unexpectedly picturesque. Beautiful Clydesdales, flying red ribbons in the blue sky, the not-so-distant soaring ranges and an old-fashioned irrigation system that keeps the grass green, a rare sight in these parts.

A two-tone sky.

Today's sunset.

It's almost boring. Unless you're standing under one.

Wonder of the Santa Fe night.

I am caught in the web the night-winds spin.

The edge of the wheat-ridge speaks to me.

I talk with the leaves of the mulberry tree.

And now I hear, as I sit all alone

In the dusk, by another big Santa Fe stone,

The souls of the tall corn gathering round

And the gay little souls of the grass in the ground.

Listen to the tale the cotton-wood tells.

Listen to the wind-mills, singing o'er the wells.

Listen to the whistling flutes without price

Of myriad prophets out of paradise.

Vachel Lindsay

Coyote melody.

We heard them on the prowl like crazy last night.