#again they worry me less than bison because they come in smaller groups

[words-writ-in-starlight]

As someone who also grew up near Yellowstone, I am also terrified of bison. My most terrifying experience of my life was when my father and I were on a bike ride around the park and we got stuck in a bison heard crossing the road. We hung onto a car to get through, I don't think I breathed for the five minutes it took to get through. Also, rathorn give off the energy of moose who give a fuck.

Bison! Are! Terrifying!  

Every time I talk about living in Yellowstone, people go “oooh have you seen a bear” and like, yeah, one time a black bear sprinted across the road ten feet from me, sat its ass down in the ditch, and peeked over its shoulder every ten seconds to see if I was gone, until I realized that it was going to continue playing I Can’t See You So I’m Invisible until I left.  Grizzlies aren’t that harmless, they kill folks every year and if you try to hunt one, it will hunt you back, but they also don’t wander around in groups.  You are unlikely to encounter more than two grizzly bears, in my experience.  If one gets into town, that’s scary, but it’s probably one bear.

Bison?  Those fuckers will amble down the only street in your tiny little smudge mark of a town, in a herd 200 strong, moving an ambitious mile and a half per hour, and you can’t get around them in any respectable way, because if you blink at them wrong, they will introduce your ribcage to your eyeballs by way of your throat.  

One bear in your backyard is one bear in your backyard.  Bison will close down a whole stretch of road for As Long As They Feel Like It, and you just have to live with it, because what are you going to do?  Walk past them?  You and all your toothpick bones and as-yet-un-ground-hamburger meat?  Drive past them in your tin foil car?

Good luck with that.