Very Dangerous Bison.

Once when we lived in Montana my Mom and Dad drove up for a visit and I got a semi-frantic phone call that went something like this:

Mom: "Hi Jenny! Is a bison going to run in front of our car? I just saw a sign to look out for bison crossing the road. Do they do that often? Do they trample across? Is it dangerous driving through here?"

Me: "Mom, you will definitely know way ahead of time if bison are crossing the road and you will have more than enough time to slow down and wait for them."

Mom: "Well do they go fast?"

Me: "What sign did you see?"

Mom: "It had an animal on it that had antlers and it said watch out for bison or something."

Me: "Are you sure it wasn't an elk or deer something on the sign..."

and so on.

Needless to say on that trip Mom and I joked many times about the dangerous bison.

Now this is one of our running jokes. Once Mom even found a newspaper article about someone being gored by a bison and she sent it to me with a note saying "See. Watch out. Very dangerous bison."

(Which by the way is true. If they are provoked they can be very dangerous.) They just don't generally run out of nowhere in front of cars like deer. If you stay in your car or farther back they are really not much of a danger at all.

Oddly, since that time I haven't had a bison encounter. Until our drive home the other day. We were driving along and then lo! in front of us a herd of bison crossing the road!

It was very serendipitous and I had a lot of fun texting mom pictures and messages about our encounter.

Hopefully one day we won't really cross a running bison on the road because that indeed seems very dangerous!