WEEKLY GEEKS ASSIGNMENT: This week you are asked to share books (fiction or nonfiction) and/or movies which center around an animal or animals.
This is a tough one for me as we have never had pets for a long period of time. I and my two oldest children are very allergic to pet hair. We’ve had “farm” animals (See my post on chickens here.) but they were never pets. However, we are still animal lovers – mostly wild animals.
My husband has always had a gift for spotting animals in the wild and he has lead my eyes on some great adventures. Because of him we have a big ‘life-list’ of various bird species. Our favorite bird sightings have been golden eagles and pilated woodpeckers. During all of our years of camping and hiking we’ve been able to spot some amazing animals. My favorite is the moose.
But I have to tell you one of our experience with buffalo. Forty years ago it was rare for us to spot a buffalo but now, thanks to great wildlife management, the herds in the west are building to great sizes. The best sightings are in Custer State Park in South Dakota and Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.
This story takes place in the Grand Tetons. One day, as we were traveling on one of the interior roads, my husband spotted quite a number of buffalo back about half a mile away. (Yes, he’s a great spotter.) Through the binoculars they looked to be moving towards us so we pulled off the road, shut off the truck and waited. We weren’t worried about our safety as there was a fence. They wouldn’t cross the fence. Wrong. These beasts, weighing about a ton each, simply walked up to the fence and jumped over. Then they crossed the road, jumped the fence on the other side and wandered off to the pasture on the other side of the road. There were several hundred buffalo in this herd. So much fun to watch that we came back several days to see this phenomenon.
This reminded us of a favorite movie – Dances With Wolves. The buffalo hunt scene was unforgettable. On the big screen the viewer feels right in the middle of the melee. It felt so real that it was exhausting. Since we saw the buffalo jump the fence we’ve gone back to the movie several times. Now I can smell and hear the real thing.
What about you – what are your animal experiences, wild or tame? For more Weekly Geeks, click on the image at the top of this post.
Reading all those posts, I go, oh, you’ve forgotten this book or that film, LOL. How I can possibly have forgotten Dances with wolves. What an extraordinary film, I absolutely loved it.
This is quite a buffalo story. I would have been pretty frightened, I guess. But I’m sure it was an amazing sight.
I’ve never seen them in the wild. I wrote about cat books.
I absolutely love the buffalo scene in Dances with Wolves! I like animals in the wild more than house pets, too. Especially in books.
You will probably find this shocking but I have never seen Dances with Wolves. I have seen pieces of it but I can’t watch the whole thing. Interesting story about the buffalo.
I love your buffalo story!
My husband went to the University of Colorado so in addition to mascot Ralphie stuff all about the house, we have managed to learn quite a bit about the animal over the years. Really fascinating. So much so that my son could not fathom why people would eat a buffalo burger when he saw it on a menu out west last summer.
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