Ballerina Buffalo

Well, boys and babes, say hello to Billy-Bob Bison, the bodacious Ballerina Buffalo from the barren, bone-dry, blustery, blistering backwoods of Bodine, Kansas (by the bending banks of the Baintree Bayou, beyond the blue-black basalt basin).

Upon first witnessing his winning willowy ways and wondrous whipsaw whirling, you just might be asking yourself: “What in the world is this well-formed, wild and wooly wanderer of the Western wide-open doing with such a wimpy way of disporting?” “Why?” “What’s with him?”

Truth be told, it turns out that today there’s not too many types of trade at which a topnotch terrain-trampler like B-B can try his hoof and tail. Times are tough, and they’ve taken their toll.

Guess our grain-gulping guy just got grouchy, going galumphing across the greening grasslands, grazing on the gorse and grinding away his days. Gee, wouldn’t you?

How can a hirsute herbivore such as he have a happy hereafter, if all he can do is keep his head down and hustle through the high heather, hoping for a healthy hank of hearty hay or a handy heaping helping of fine feathery fescue? Not much of a career there, if you ask me (or Billy-Bob, for that matter).

And check out that cap of considerable coarse curls cascading ‘cross his crowning hump! Such a charming cape of concentrically circularly coiffed curlicues can’t be kept concealed from the crushing carnival crowds! People need to peep so precisely and painstakingly plaited a plush pelt! For sure!

So, for this session, our sizable sweet-tempered Sir B-B has selected a suite of sublime steps — including splits, sissones, and a superb sur le cou-de-pied, set to the stirring sounds of a supple symphonic Schubert sextet!

[But, before we begin today’s breathtaking Buffalo Ballet, bear with me as I briefly review some liner notes. Billy-Bob Bison is actually a Bison bison bison, or American plains bison (though, I think you’ll agree, he’s anything but plain, heh-heh). While we get away with saying ‘buffalo’ all the time — because most folks think that bison are buffalo — bison are in fact only distantly related to the true buffalos, such as the nyati, the Mbogo, the affalo, or the Cape or African buffalo. And let’s not even get started on the Asian water buffalo, which is another separate species entirely! Like most other full-grown male bison, B-B tips the scales at just over an even ton, yet he can propel that bulk at a top speed of up to 35 miles per hour (or sometimes as high as 48 miles per hour in mid-pirouette)! Considering their imposing bulk and speed — not to mention a typically belligerently aggressive and impulsive, unpredictable nature — it’s no wonder that the wild bison that populated the plains of the Old Wild West were considered more dangerous than even the mighty grizzly bear. But you have nothing to fear here today folks, for B-B is but the latest in a long line of docile domesticated bison. Having been educated for years in such social skills as floral arrangement, English Romantic poetry, sonnets for the lute, lace-making and how to prepare and serve a five-course high tea for a mixed assemblage of peers, Billy-Bob is not likely to present any danger at all.]