EEeeeeeeeeeeeep!

...says the pika, (Ochotona princeps) from this postcard art I had to buy. Pikas are a favorite creature of mine...

These little guys squeak out whistling calls like this from many a high alpine boulder field in the Rockies. Though they look like rodents they are actually lagomorphs, related more closely to rabbits and hares. Aside from being so endearingly cute they are very interesting animals to me.

You see, they are a bit like alpine farmers up in the high mountains. Biologists have found that pikas store up huge caches of grasses and vegetation all summer to survive the frigid long winters, but they do it with a surprising sophistication. It turns out they harvest a wide diversity of grass and forb species quite deliberately based upon their shelf life. This way they can plan out their winter rationing by eating certain grasses that won't save long in early winter while saving more hardy varieties for late winter. Kind of like a natural haybarn or root cellar so to speak.

I have only seen them once or twice in my time in the West. Often you will only here their little alarms squeaks echoing across the boulder fields. It causes you to pause and look around in amazement...