Prairie Dogs sucked out of holes to be sold as pets

By Associated Press

AMARILLO (AP) - Pulling prairie dogs from their holes is a nasty wakeup call for the burrowing animals who are sought-after prizes in Japan where they are sold for hundreds of dollars as pets.

Using a vacuum truck to extract the animals from their burrows, a Colorado-based rodent control company is sucking up plenty of business in the Texas Panhandle.


Gay Balfour and Dave Honaker, co-owners of Dog Gone, are in the fourth week of a prairie-dog roundup on a 320-acre tract.
"These little guys are worth $700 apiece as pets in Japan and $450 in New York," Balfour, who invented the large suction device, told the Amarillo Globe-News.

"They're actually worth more than yearling steers," he said.

Prairie dogs, members of the squirrel family, can be pests to farmers and ranchers in the western United States. But Honaker said they are sought after as exotic pets elsewhere.

"They make good pets - they're real trainable and social animals," he said. "We're just taking the young ones. There's plenty of them here."

Workers captured three to four dozen Tuesday using the vacuum truck, which noisily pulls the prairie dogs through a wide hose and into an enclosure. The vacuum pulls lighter animals from the holes, leaving the heavier adults alone.

Balfour and Honaker have been capturing the animals, which grow to about one foot in length, for the past five years. They said an exotic pet dealer contracted with an Amarillo landowner to capture and market prairie dogs.

The pet dealer took care of any required licensing and permits, they said.
"All we need is an out-of-state trapping license," Balfour said.