Sadly Ida the Buffalo did not have a healthy baby bull calf. The calf died in the birthing process and Linda and her husband Verne needed to extract the calf from Ida or else Ida would have died too. The calf had a broken leg and twisted shoulder. I could sense that things weren’t right when I was there watching Ida struggling with the birth. Linda and Verne needed to separate Ida from the herd on foot, with a pickup and a tractor during a horrible thunderstorm, but they managed to save Ida. I was also told that Tonka (the herd bull) who is very protective of Ida, was not too happy to be away from Ida.
This morning I read the children’s book I got at the Smoky Hill Bison Co. It is called The True Story of Nickel, The Baby Buffalo Who Thought He was a Dog. It is a very cute story, and a little sad too. Nickel lives in Colorado and I think that I have actually seen his herd when I was in Colorado a few years back with Tara and Erik. We could see the herd from the highway and on the Nickel website it shows a map of where the herd is and I swear we passed by that same herd on our trip up to Keystone and Breckenridge.
I’m in the Wichita Airport now and awaiting my flight to Chicago. The Wichita airport is great because they have a bunch of complimentary workstations where you can connect directly to the internet for free. Logan Airport take notice!
