Give Me A Home Where The Buffalo Roam...

Recently on a road trip, my wife and I were driving through East Texas and encountered two buffalo on the property of a local cattle company. I've seen buffalo before, but they were behind big game fences at state parks or on display at the zoo. This time, they were out in the open, so we stopped for a closer look and pictures.

The first one didn't want to have anything to do with me and never turned around. Still, he was a fine specimen. I call him Harry. He was the bigger of the two. Here's his picture:


The other buffalo was a little smaller. I call him Ralph. He was intrigued by my presence at the cattle fence, but wasn't in a hurry to acknowledge my being there.


So, I started to whistle and here he came. I'm thinking that I will probably be able to pet this "little" guy. Afterall, I might even give him something to eat (I didn't have anything to give him, but what did he know?). So, after a few more whistles & clucks of the toungue, he finally walked over. Here he is:


There's just one problem with buffalo: they don't like people. Maybe it's due to nearly being exterminated by the indians and cowboys two centuries ago. I'm not sure. I wasn't thinking about any of that. I was this close to a real, live buffalo. I was going to pet him. When I reached over the fence to touch his head, he ducked. He then made a quick move toward the fence and pushed against the barbed wire with his head. I reached and scratched his head. But I noticed that he was snorting and pawing the ground. The wire in the fence started squeaking and the fence posts started "popping." Ralph was trying to get me! That leads to the next picture:


Notice that I snapped the picture to the right of Ralph at this point. I was moving in the general direction of my car. I remembered what I saw on the discovery channel once - buffalo are able to run between 30 and 50 miles per hour. If I stayed around the fence, he'd probably get mad enough to break it or something. I could just see myself being bulldozed and gored by Ralph and then have him turn on my wife in our car and wreck that. If we were fortunate enough to survive the attack, some passerby might report a certain license plate number and tell authorities that I was in the vicinity and was responsible for the beast getting out. It was a good time to just get in the car and continue up the road.

On our way back from our trip, we took a detour through Oklahoma and its indian territory. In one of the towns we passed through, we saw this sign:


I guess that's what happens to bad buffalo. Ralph beware.