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Saturday, April 25, 2015

Shooting Bison in a Barrel



I wish I could tell all the people who milled around terrifying the loose bison yesterday that they probably contributed to the problem. Bison are wild animals.They wouldn't run up to a lion or tiger waving cell phones and taking selfies would they? 

Maybe they would.

Liz actually saw a post from a  news channel urging people to go get photos and selfies. It has since been taken down....

But maybe if people had stayed home and not run around chasing them waving cell phones they might have calmed down enough to be captured. Or maybe not.

Meanwhile, reading the comments on various news stories raised my blood pressure beyond the safe point. All those instant experts damning the family that owned the animals, the police, and anyone who dared make an intelligent comment. 

Wow. Do they talk to their mothers that way?

I saw suggestions that the owners should be shot too. That they were Nazis. Monsters. Bad business people. Liz went to school with some of the family members and none of those awful things are true, but all of them are hurtful.

There were lots of urban fencing experts too. Obviously in the utopia where they live, trees never fall on fences. Animals never panic and run through fences that would normally stop a train. I have seen a German Shepherd dog eat through the wall of a HOUSE!. It weighed a lot less than a bison. 

I had to stop reading. I mean, who you gonna trust? Cornell experts? Farmers? People who work with bison? Or people who never stepped in manure, but sure know how to pile it?

We once had a valuable, but overly nervous....kinda crazy really...Holstein heifer, jump a fence and head for the Thruway in the middle of the night. The same Interstate the buffalo were on. Call us monsters and/or Nazis if you will, but we consulted with the state police and together decided that if she got on the Interstate she would have to be shot.

The officers went out on the road to look for her and do the deed if necessary.

Luckily she was found and brought home before she got on the highway, but it could have ended very differently.

I don't care how good you build your fences. Trees fall in storms. People open gates. Stuff happens.

However, I fear that social media will soon remove our ability to keep animals at all, no matter what our motives, no matter what our methods. When the people who equate uninformed opinions and cliches with actual knowledge use comments as a courtroom, much damage is done. Common sense isn't going to help. It is too hard to find. 

Oh, and in NY, if someone had been injured by those animals, the farmer would have been liable......so preventing that from happening was probably a good business decision.




5 comments:

Terry and Linda said...

Here it is a free range state...but If your animal is killed on the road you are liable.

Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com

Anonymous said...

What a terrible, sad situation it was, and did not have to be that way , no. People reacted and those of us who love , and live with animals, and would rather live and care for with them than most humans, do not get it. The Native Americans in your area should be allowed to take the hides as they would deal with all the animals with respect at least. Maybe that happened. Otherwise I will know the animals are better returned to their spiritual essence...more at peace now , in a world that is falling in around them with values such as are reported in that article. Blessings for the family who owned them, and deep condolences in their loss. Thank you for being a good steward and ,lover of Life!!! Blessings all around...Merri

12Paws said...

I hear you & agree with your comments. The Bible says that Jesus said that in the last days that these things, and worse, will happen. It's how we know we are to be watching and waiting.

ellie k said...

And then there are the people that drive through your fence in the middle of the night, back out and leave and the next thing you hear most of you cows are in the road. A quick phone call or knock at your door to say the fence was down would have saved a lot of time getting it back up and maybe some lives.

threecollie said...

Linda, no free range here...probably just as well, as crowded as NY is.

Merri, I don't know what they did with them. I am rather shocked by the abuse they have taken.....

12Paws, this was tragic all around.....and you are so right about what is happening these days.

Ellie, oh, yeah, that too! When they put the new road in the power company took our pasture fence down in a far distant corner...twice! I wrote a newspaper column at the time about chasing cows in the dark on a cliff with only a state trooper's spotlight to guide me and the cow. And then he turned it off! Terrifying.