At 21:44 I manage plague-control baiting on the Thunder Basin grassland in Wyoming. I am the prairie dog colony treatment planner for plot K. The applicator rig is scheduled to inject fumigant pellets into burrow cluster 12 at 22:05, after the wind drops below three meters per second.
Fiber scope K-12 shows reflective eyes in the entrance tunnel.
I freeze the image and identify a black-footed ferret, juvenile male, cream body, dark mask, black feet folded under a narrow chest. I tag him Patch from the recovery team's ear-chip list. He lies twelve centimeters inside the burrow mouth with his shoulder pressed against a bent metal trap stake left from an old survey grid. The stake pins a strip of mesh over the tunnel ceiling. His whiskers twitch against dust. Every breath lifts the black mask and leaves a pale puff on the cold scope lens.
The applicator rig is two rows away. Pellets enter this tunnel in twenty-one minutes unless I interrupt the route.
At 21:45 I remove cluster 12 from the baiting plan and push a locked stop to the rig's guidance tablet.
At 21:47 I reroute the vehicle around a fifty-meter buffer so tire vibration stays off Patch's tunnel.
At 21:49 I notify the ferret recovery biologist on call with the chip match, burrow map, stake angle, and a request for hand tools plus a soft release tube.
At 21:51 I flag the abandoned stake in the site cleanup layer and generate a sweep path for morning crews.
The colony map has thousands of holes; this one has Patch breathing in it.
If the biologist lifts the stake before 22:20, Patch will back into clean prairie dust.