If you aren’t afraid of prairie dogs, you better start.

According to a new report issued this week by WildEarth Guardians, an animal rights group based in New Mexico, five species of North American prairie dogs have lost more than 90 percent of their native habitat due to habitat loss, poisoning and shooting. Translation? They claim man has expanded his living space at the expense of the cuddly little doe-eyed prairie dog.

You know, the little fellow who looks like a gopher and who is rife with fleas? The critter that still transmits bubonic plague to anyone not being careful? A group out there is mad there aren’t more of these little plague factories and they are blaming you, America!

Of all the states listed in the group’s report, most received poor grades – including the federal Bureau of Land Management – due to their failures to protect prairie dogs. Wyoming got a D+ while Kansas, Nebraska and North Dakota earned Fs. Arizona was the only state whose score marked an improvement. Its B- was the highest grade of any state listed, due largely to its reintroduction of 74 black-tailed prairie dogs in the southeast corner of the state.

If prairie dogs continue to wither away as a species, bad things will happen. Admittedly, I’m no scientist but I know that nature abhors a vacuum. This is why the great outdoors is so dirty – it hasn’t been vacuumed in a while. It was Aristotle who first observed this many centuries ago and, for an ancient Greek, he was pretty sharp – so sharp, in fact, that he apparently knew about vacuum cleaners thousands of years before Hoover invented them.

But he’s right. Mother Nature loves balance. When too many trees overcrowd a forest, she sends a lightning bolt to create a wildfire. It thins the trees out, and she restores balance. In this case, with fewer and fewer prairie dogs running around, she will respond with one of two things: either a flood of prairie dogs, or one large super-prairie dog. Either way, the native prairie dog homeland will be reclaimed at Man’s expense.

It’s a little scary when you think about it. We don’t know what prairie dogs like or what they dislike. All they seem to do is stand outside their burrow, on their hind legs doing a bad impersonation of us, chirping away and whistling in an even worse impersonation of us.

In some respects, Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward knew more about those big worms they fought in “Tremors” than we do about prairie dogs. So, with the prospect of wave after wave of prairie dogs sicced on us by a vengeful, balance-seeking Mother Nature, America is flying blind.

President Barack Obama will likely want to open what diplomats call “peaceful dialogue” – to find a way to live peacefully with our small hairy neighbors. Previous administrations only looked down their noses at prairie dog peace talks, so it is to Obama’s credit his team is open to negotiation, no matter how ludicrous the opposing party may be.

As the ancient Greeks also used to say, “Forewarned is forearmed.” This is why Plato and his friends would write crib notes on their forearms before taking tests. We would do well to learn from their example – so write “Save the Prairie Dogs” on your forearms or risk falling victim to Mother Nature’s wrath, shaped like gophers.