During those first months the shimerdas never went to town. krajiek encouraged them in the belief that in black hawk they would somehow be mysteriously separated from their money. they hated krajiek, but they clung to him because he was the only human being with whom they could talk or from whom they could get information. he slept with the old man and the two boys in the dugout barn, along with the oxen. they kept him in their hole and fed him for the same reason that the prairie-dogs and the brown owls house the rattlesnakes-- because they did not know how to get rid of him.

in the last paragraph, krajiek is indirectly compared to
a) the oxen.
b) a brown owl.
c) a rattlesnake.
d) the prairie dogs.