Explore "The Prairie-Dogs and their Priest, the Burrowing-Owl" by Frank Hamilton Cushing on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Once, long, long ago, there stood in Prairie-dog Land a large Prairie-dog village. Prairie-dog Land is south of Zuni, beyond Grease Mountain; and in the middle of that country, which is one of our smaller meadows, stands a mountain, which is a little mound. All round about the base of this mountain were the sky-holes and door-mounds and pathways of the grandfathers of the Prairie-dogs. In the very top of the mount was the house of an old Burrowing-owl and his wife.
One summer it rained and it rained and it rained, so that the fine fields of mitäliko (wild portulaca) were kept constantly fresh, and the Prairie-dogs had unfailing supplies of this, their favorite food. They became fat and happy, and gloried in the rainstorms that had produced such an abundant harvest for them. But still it kept raining, until by-and-by, when they descended to their fields of mitäliko, they found their feet were wet, which they did not like any more than Prairie-dogs like it today.