"What Did You Say About My Mother?"

We went to Elk Island Park, my wife and me, on Sunday. Elk Island Park should be called "Pee Your Pants Because There Are Big Scary Bison All Over The Place And They Are Not Even In Cages" Park.

 

Shrewd marketing.( I guess if they called "PYPBTABSBAOTPATANEIC' Park , no one would go.)

 

There's a place at Elk Island Park called "The Bison Loop."

 

Just inside the entrance to this Loop is a sign. This sign features a picture of an obviously terrified tourist, running away from a charging bison, who is in hot "steam coming out of the nose" pursuit. This great hairy thing is planning to run her down...which is sorta freaky on two levels:

 

1) The person is about two seconds from being gored and/or trampled to death and

 

2) Someone just stood there, took a picture of it and then sold the picture to the Park Services

 

The caption under the image in big no nonsense lettering is "THIS COULD BE YOU." There follows a discussion that bison are unpredictable, and that they can charge without warning...even if they looked like harmless grass eating monsters only a few seconds before. The sign tells the story of a photographer who spent hours getting into position...but got charged when some other people unexpectedly came onto the scene. A PHOTOGRAPHER! CHARGED! By freaking BISON (!), who are by their very nature very big and potentially seriously pissy.

 

We escaped the Loop unscathed. No bison...although there were a number of ferocious looking gophers (also uncaged, by the way).

 

I took the sign we'd seen as a warning from God. Sheree didn't see it that way. Elk Island is the very park Sheree wanted to go to. She's been heading out to the great outdoors wherever possible lately, photographing birds -- which I find preferable to bison since birds probably won't kill you.

 

(The other day we found an inch worm on our BED, that had stowed away inside a fold her sock while she was tramping around "in the bush." It was pulsing along our sheets. Sheree asked me to dispatch it...but felt it was excessive when I returned in a surgical mask, oven mitts and toting seven sheets of sturdy paper toweling.This however, is another story. My point is simply that my wife is turning into Grizzly Adams.)

 

Anyway, I digress. We were, to my immense relief, on our way out of the park with limbs intact and no horn-sized holes in our chests, on our way to search out a nice safe Hutterite Colony, when we saw these two HUGE bison by the side of the road.

 

Sheree started making inarticulate noises and gesturing wildly with her hands, camera and eyes. I know from past experience that she is NOT having a seizure. She wants me to pull over. So I did.

 

The bison were mostly uninterested in us...and I do admit that it was kinda cool actually hearing them eat. But I noticed the bigger one, the guy in the picture, was keeping an eye on us.

 

I sat in the driver seat, hand hovering over the shift, prepared at a moment's notice to spring into action, and Jean Claude Van Damme-like, throw the car into Drive and Get The Hell Out Of Here mode.

 

Sheree was happily taking pictures. Then she reached over to turn off the ignition.

 

"What the hell are you doing?" I asked politely. "Didn't you see the picture where that person was running from the bison? They can cover twenty yards in 1.73 seconds."

 

(Okay...I made that part up...but it sounded good.)

 

Sheree rolls her eyes and mutters something about a 'city boy.' She is now deep into her "put your hat on backwards and be a Deliverance kinda survivalist type" mode. There's no arguing with that. Besides...I don't know how to play a banjo.

 

So I now have to keep one hand hovering over the ignition and the other one over the stick shift.

 

Sheree looks back at me and rolls her eyes.

 

Then she opens the door and leans out to get another shot. The brain-eating bison are only a few feet away. Sure they look like harmless herbivores on the outside...

 

"Get enough shots?" I ask finally because my hands are getting kind of tired of hovering.

 

She tells me that she just needs a few more (she pretty much always needs a few more) and suggests I go up through the sun roof to make some photographs of my own. Genetically bred warrior that I am (see the "Inch Worm Incident" above), I see instantly where that will wind up: me getting stuck there, whilst the enormous bison, now certain of both victory and manflesh will charge.

 

I demur.

 

I hover.

 

I wait.

 

I sigh.

 

Eventually we drive away.

 

This is what those creatures looked like. Honest.

Done