It was moving day for 79 prairie dogs that were forcibly removed over the weekend from a dedicated drill site near the University of Texas of the Permian Basin.

“I’m following the instructions by the city manager (Richard Morton), and he said get rid of them,” Odessa Parks and Wildlife Director Steve Patton said of the lot behind the University Small Animal Clinic, 2801 N. JBS Parkway.

Luckily for them, the city tapped Lynda Watson to do the job. Rather than dousing them with poison, she hits them with soapy water.

“It makes them very uncomfortable,” Watson said. “They come up, and I reach in and grab them.” She compared the operation to the Whack-a-mole game.

Patton said the city had been looking for someone to do this for a while.

“They’re usually eradicated,” Patton said. “This is more humane.”

Watson said she takes them back to Lubbock to be vaccinated so they can be put back in the wild, this time to a ranch near Rankin, although she wouldn’t get more specific.

“What happens is your barn gets burned down and your neighbors shoot at you,” Watson said.

Burr Williams with the Sibley Nature Center in Midland said opinions by some ranchers had changed from previous generations and some see benefits in the small mammals which eat mesquite seeds.

Watson said it wasn’t the fault of the prairie dogs, which she compared to squirrels rather than rats.

“They’re not evil creatures, they’re just stuck,” Watson said. She said prairie dogs should be out of cities and neighborhood where they can be a nuisance, coming up in people’s yards.

Watson estimated she’d snatched 82,000 animals in her 32 years of work.

Watson said she made her first trip to Odessa in the spring after being contacted by Assistant Parks Director Scott Anderson. Watson said she couldn’t get all of the animals in one trip due to the underground colony being quite old, large and interconnected.

Watson said unlike in the wild, the fenced-in prairie dogs have no predators and almost all of babies born grow up, fed in part by some neighbors who throw scraps of food in there. She said there’s probably 100 left in the area.

“I just hope the city will think this is worthwhile, Watson said.