Stay away from me. I just got back from a West River week, and for three or four days straight I walked among prairie dogs. Then I returned home to learn that our p-dogs may have the deadly Sylvatic Plague, which can be transmitted from animals to humans. An infected p-dog has been found near Interior. I'm starting to feel feverish.

In the short few days I traveled last week, I found a half-dozen different opinions on p-dogs. Sportsmen staying at my motel say they traveled many miles just for a chance to shoot at them. A horse-lover who "hates to kill anything" told me she's ready to start poisoning the fast-multiplying p-dogs on her ranch. Most ranchers think the p-dogs have always been a plague, but one land-owner told me they are actually a resource. He says hunters will pay hundreds of dollars a day to hunt them, and when hunted the populations can be kept in check. An environmentalist told me that he can understand the ranchers' concerns, but the p-dog is important to the eco-system and mustn't be totally eliminated.

We've joshed before that this wouldn't be a problem if Lewis and Clark had properly named the little rodents "Prairie Rats" rather than "Prairie Dogs." But of course we're mistaken. Prairie dogs have more avid supporters and detractors than Hillary Clinton. No other plains and prairie creature has inspired so much controversy since the gray wolf was exterminated in these parts 80 years ago.

A few weeks ago, our photograph of a boy playing basketball was chosen as a finalist in the Smithsonian photo contest and consequently quite a few of our loyal and faithful friends and readers pitched in to vote for our photo.

However, because we printed the photo in our Nov/Dec issue of South Dakota Magazine the Smithsonian editors have ruled that we are ineligible to win. We're very sorry to have put so many of you to so much work for naught, but still we appreciate the kindnesses and great effort.

And we'll keep printing our best photos in South Dakota Magazine before we share them with Smithsonian or anyone else.

I've just returned from a week of traveling northwest South Dakota, where the dry country is blooming. This hill-full of yucca overlooks the Missouri River. The prickly pear cactus have big yellow petals and all the wildflowers are pretty.

I traveled by car, but many in West River are anticipating the Fort Pierre to Deadwood wagon train that will depart July 30 from Fort Pierre. The 17-day excursion will follow the route of the historic Fort Pierre to Deadwood stagecoach route, winding past some of the ruts carved by wagon wheels 130 years ago. The group will not follow roads, nor will it use bridge crossings. They'll even cross the muddy Cheyenne valley, which has been swollen with rain water this summer.

Every night, the riders will camp and enjoy a lunch and history program. The planners already have their limit of riders and wagons, but interested persons may join the evening festivities and special events. Toward the end of the ride, they'll enjoy a buffalo feed at Fort Meade (Aug. 13), a final overnight in Boulder Canyon (Aug. 14) and a historic parade in Deadwood as a finale on August 15.

West River is postcard pretty so it should be quite a ride.

Thirteen South Dakotans will be inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame this fall in Aberdeen. We've been trying to get photographs of each inductee for our Sept/Oct issue. Yesterday, we visited Dr. Vernon Ronald Nelson in Sioux Falls. Dr. Nelson and his wife, Joyce, (pictured) live in Sioux Falls near Augustana college, where they were both teachers. Nelson's bio stated that he was a professor of physics, math and aeronautics at Augustana, and he also designed and built the first heart defibrillator used in South Dakota. He was born in Webster in 1921.

While visiting in their lovely home, which Nelson designed himself, I learned the story behind how he made the first heart stimulator. He was working at Augustana, and got a call on a Friday from a doctor at McKennan. The doctor was concerned about a surgery he was performing the following Monday. The man was really overweight, and the doctor wanted Nelson to make a device he could use to shock the patient if his heart stopped. Nelson said he would try, and on Monday delivered a rudimentary defibrillator, with spoons as the paddles. "He had to hold towels around the spoon so he wouldn't shock himself," Nelson said.

Although the doctor didn't have to use it for his Monday operation, he told Nelson he wanted to keep it for the hospital. Nelson tweaked his design, forgoing the spoons for paddles, and soon other area hospitals asked for a model. Sioux Valley, St. Joseph's in Mitchell and the Community Hospital in Parkston all asked for one.

Nelson taught at Augustana for fifty years. Besides designing the defibrillator, he also designed an electronic control system for the Zip Feed Mill in Sioux Falls in 1957, he built the first electronic football scoreboard at Augustana, and assisted the Augie music department by creating hi-fidelity speakers and electronic tuning devices. He taught over 4000 students in the field of aeronautics, and held a private pilot's license. He also found time to tutor struggling students, in his classes and in other subjects.

Despite his accomplishments, the Dr., who goes by "V.R." is incredibly humble. "When we got the phone call saying that he was chosen, V.R. said 'There must be a mistake!'" Joyce laughed. "He couldn't believe he had been accepted."

Click on the thumbnail to enlarge photo.

Yankton aerial photographer Dave Tunge sent us this stunning view of Yankton after a rainstorm. If you look to the right, you can see Yankton's new bridge alongside the old Meridian Bridge, which will be turned into a pedestrian walkway after the new bridge opens.

Tunge has won several awards with his aerial photography including Best in Show, Judge's Choice, and People's Choice from the Professional Aerial Photographer's Association. Visit his Web site at: www.dakotaerials.com.

A few weeks ago former KELOLAND anchor turned blogger Steve Hemmingson commented on our tendency to celebrate “anniversaries of the adverse.” His post came as KELO prepared to air a special marking the 10th anniversary of the devastating tornado that destroyed the McCook County town of Spencer in May 1998. “People profess to not like revisiting disasters but we keep doing it: floods, tornados, earthquakes, even terrorist bombings,” Hemmingson opined.

We’ll commemorate another of those adverse anniversaries Tuesday. It’s been five years since the worst tornado outbreak in South Dakota history. For three hours on the evening of June 24, 2003, 67 twisters swept across the state. One of the largest – an F4 – obliterated Manchester, the tiny hometown of artist Harvey Dunn, along Highway 14 in Kingsbury County. Other tornadoes caused damage around Centerville and the Turner County fairgrounds in Parker.

Many Spencer residents chose to rebuild after their storm. The few who lived at Manchester did not. Today a marker listing the names of Manchester’s residents stands at the town site.
By John Andrews

One of South Dakota's most passionate conservationists drowned in an unusual accident on June 7 in the Bad River southwest of Pierre.

Kevin Honness was a biologist with the Turner Endangered Species Fund in South Dakota for the last decade. His goal was to restore the swift fox to western South Dakota. A former Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa, he had participated in fisheries and mammalian research throughout the western U.S.

He was an interesting man who became devoted to the grasslands of central South Dakota. We wouldn't have known about his tragic death because it hardly made the statewide news. But the Pierre Capitol Journal covered it, and we happened to be in Pierre the following week.

A front page article on June 10 by Jeff Bunn reported that Kevin was found Saturday evening (June 7) after his kayak was discovered on the swollen Bad River about 16 miles north of Okaton. He was trapped under the overturned kayak and it was lodged against a tree.

Caleb Gilkerson, who guides kayakers on the river, explained the accident like this: "When it (the river) swells, you get a lot of what are called strainers -- trees, anything in the water -- once you hit them, especially in kayaks, you can't get clear."

Gilkerson said the Cheyenne River has been flowing at 70,000 cubic feet and the White River at 31,000. "Anything over 5,000 gets hairy," he said. He said the high spring flows of West River's creeks and rivers are enticing to kayakers and canoeists, but they are also dangerous.

The river claimed a friend of the South Dakota prairie. He had released approximately 200 tiny swift foxes to South Dakota, and convinced 100 private landowners that the project was important. "He was able to build relationships that were deeper than the surface and point out that really all we want to do is give this most important part of South Dakota natural history and its future a fighting chance and they said 'Count me in,'" said Mike Phillips of the Turner Endangered Species Enterprise.

The work will go on. "I know of no better way to honor him ...," Phillips said.

Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it."

Charles Dudley Warner's famous lament in the Hartford Courant of August 24, 1897 is mostly true, of course, But Charles never knew Ben Huset, a North Dakota farmer who dedicated much of his life to long-range weather forecasting. We recently saw a story in the North Dakota Horizons on Mr. Huset, who wrote a weather column in the well-known Dakota Farmer for many years.

During and after the Great Drought of the 1930s, he meticulously studied all available weather records. "We have 83 years of weather records in South Dakota, 78 years in North Dakota and 60 years in eastern Montana," he wrote in 1939. "During those 83 years, wet and dry spells have occurred with some regularity. Many of those wet and dry cycles are timed exactly to certain positions of the planets. Each cycle indicates a certain amount of precipitation for a certain time. Taking many of these cycles into consideration, we can, as a rule, figure out within two inches how much the precipitation will average over any fair-sized area."

The self-taught astronomer wanted to help his fellow plains farmers to know when to plant, what to plant and whether to be crop insurance.

He published and sold small forecast books called "Dakota-Montana Weather" from 1937 to 1968. Insisting that they be affordable to all, he sold the books for $1 or $2. Many farmers swore by the Huset forecasts, and made farming decisions accordingly. Eventually, he expanded his territory to include 17 states and he added hurricane and earthquake forecasts for coastal areas.

One wonders whether Mr. Huset would still advocate relying on past cycles to predict weather patterns in today's world of global warming?