There Are Still Buffalo: Three True Stories.
There are still Buffalo. Three true stories.
by Michael Scott
Buffalo was always on fire.
When I was seven or eight, my father enrolled me in a house league for five pin bowling. I’m not a very competitive person. Even then I liked bowling more than other sports, because I liked the idea of trying to improve myself more then the idea of competing against someone else. I bowled every Saturday morning for what seemed like a life time. Practices took place extremely early in the morning. I don’t know when I was waking up, but I know I woke earlier for bowling then I did for school.
Eventually I became cognizant of the competitive element, and had to give it up. It happened all at once, and it was too much pressure for me. Suddenly, the success of the team was riding on my shoulders, while previously I hadn’t even realized I was on a team. I thought we were just people who took turns bowling.
Another big factor, was that bowling interfered with the best T.V.. W.N.E.D. had a killer Saturday morning line up, back in 1987. Leaving for bowling meant that I was missing out on The Hilarious House of Frightenstein.
Not leaving for bowling, though, meant that I usually slept through Hilarious House of Frightenstein, and didn’t wake up until it was time for W.N.E.D.’s Buffalo news. Nothing works out the way we plan it.
Still, I felt lucky. I was living in Scarborough. Much better than Buffalo, which, as I was quickly learning, was always on fire.
There are no such thing as buffalo.
It started as a joke.
Five of us were on a dinner break from our acting class. We went to school in a Mall, so there was a little more choice for dinner than is usual for a college student. Most people exploited the resources of the food court, but always a few with extra money, and extra balls, would sneak off to The Rockwater for beer and bar fair. On this day, I was among those sneaking in a seriously frowned upon pint.
Ashton Catherwood ordered a Bison burger. This provoked debate. The table discussed whether or not a bison was the same as a buffalo. What the population numbers might have been. Whether or not Ashton’s particular animal had likely been wild game, or the product of some farming experiment. I, for both comical and political reasons, insisted that “Bison” was only a marketing term. There were, in fact, no such thing as buffalo.
I was kindly asked to shut my god damn mouth, as I often am when I speak honestly. My opinions are too loud for most peoples taste. To me though, it didn’t matter whether or not I was technically “right.” What mattered was the atrocity of the idea.
Once, the North American Bison were so plentiful that they defied all attempt to noun them collectively. One buffalo is a ” buffalo.” In groups they are called some “buffalo.” Linguistically, Buffalo are treated as a substance. It is reminiscent of the time when they flowed across the landscape like water, an elemental component of North America.
For me though, at the age of 25, this Bison Burger, an object which could easily be pluralised (burger, burgers), was my first personal contact with the animal.
I was sad. I was angry. “There are no such thing as buffalo,” was a mantra I carried for the next five years. It was symbolic of everything that was wrong with the world. I repeated it. I believed it. It broke my heart, and I used it to break the hearts of others.
Once, the word “Buffalo” was synonymous with “life” for hundreds of thousands of people on the north American continent. Now Buffalo was just a city. And it was in poverty. And it was burning down.
There are still Buffalo.
On Christmas eve, Sandra and I stopped in high park, and took her little dog for a walk. In my memory it was snowing. We wandered through the little zoo, and saw all the different kinds of cows. Her dog marched, and kicked, and was happy.
It was a short walk, maybe twenty minutes, before we saw the Buffalo.
Buffalo is a diminutive term. It emphasizes their smallness of stature, by comparison to their European cousins. They were big enough, though, to fill my entire mind. I stood for a life time looking at those animals. I was the last person on Earth. I had memories of running naked, like Kevin Costner, though the snow.
There were about five individuals. Two stood quite close. One ate. Ate. It was alive. It ate. My eyes though, were locked on the stillness of a larger example, sitting on the opposite side of the pen. Chewing maybe. Doing not much of anything. I didn’t breathe.
Sandra pulled on my arm. I looked over my shoulder, at the most impossible creature I’d ever seen, as we walked back to her car. I felt as if I’d seen a dragon.
In Sandra’s apartment, that night, I held her against my my chest. I buried my face in her neck, and sobbed. It was a messy sort of crying. Wet, and hard, and long. She was gentle. She pet my head. In the end we agreed:
There are still buffalo.
By Michael Scott
