For the last hitch of the season, the Red crew (and a few new faces from the White crew) had their very first hitch in Montana, working with American Prairie to do plague mitigation. Every day we spread about 1000 lbs of grain with a mild insecticide to prairie dog towns, which would keep them from getting fleas that spread the plague and have the potential to wipe out entire towns. During our journey, we saw 36 snakes, about 33 of which were rattlesnakes, and several of those encounters were very close calls. Another close call was our second night, driving back to camp in the dark when a bison on the side of the road decided to charge the rig, veering away at the last second (the bison's horn being the hard place).

Despite the danger and fairly monotonous work, we had lots of fun and found tons of prairie dog bones and even a bison horn!