Perpetual Passage

I saw it again. A small brown blur whizzed by the ground in front of me. I had seen it several times in the past hour, or was this a different one? I was looking at an ugly, beady-eyed creature -I thought it was cute at first, but after staring at it for a while, its quite vicious looking. "It's a prairie dog," a voice suggested.
"Don't those live in prairies?" I supposed. We were far from a prairie. At 11,000 feet above sea level, I was in the midst of a six-mile hike to the peak of a 13,000-foot mountain. (Maybe it's a meerkat, "No, those live in Africa") Two exhausting miles into the hike, we were observing a plump, petite creature eyeing us askance. …