So fluffy!

Meet Ohio's prairie dog, the thirteen-lined ground squirrel. This little baby is so tiny! About the size of a salt-and-pepper shaker, albeit the cutest one you've ever seen.

🐥🐥🐥🐥🐥

Thirteen-lined ground squirrels spend nearly half the year underground in hibernation. They need habitat that won't flood during the winter. They spend the summer feeding on clover, flowers and grass seeds.

A moment of tenderness? Not quite. The little baby met a neighbor who chased the little one away from its patch. Honestly, the baby needed lightning reflexes after the adult lunged for its legs. But the babies are precocious and brave. This one wandered across the open road on its morning foraging at Joyce Park.

Adult ground squirrels like this male stand as tall as a Coke bottle, but they can disappear even in mowed grass. They will bark out alarm calls to warn others of danger.

The ground squirrels found some tasty seeds attached to the straw that groundskeepers placed over fresh sod at the park. The little squirrels go mostly unnoticed at the park.

A baby ground squirrel plays on the trunk of a tree. The squirrels seemed to relish the shade on this hot day, but most afternoons can be found out in the open on the grass soccer fields.

Scale is hard to convey in a photo, but these twin babies are tiny!

Joyce Park is one of the only places around Cincinnati I know where to find Ohio's prairie dogs, which makes me wonder if we're just one calamity away from losing them forever in Southwest Ohio. I honestly don't know why we don't have them on every soccer field in Ohio. They don't damage the fields, they don't dig dangerous ankle-breaking holes and they are a joy to watch.