I have a neighbor who always seems to need some kind of unique, not exactly exotic animal around. He has 3 Icelandic sheep, a llama, Alpaca, mini-burros and of course a unknown number of ornamental chickens, Guinea hens and a pair of Peacocks , a team of norwegian fjord horses and a couple of riding horses. So one Sunday afternoon he comes home with one bull and 2 cow buffalo, that he had gone to western So.Dak. and picked them up. He has a barn, and it is an old barn, and some what dilapidated shape. The hay mow floor is gone and there are just a few floor joists of it that are eft.
He calls me up and wants me to come over and see his buffalo, he was so proud of them. I said OK , and as we had company I said we would be over after they left.
Well, the neighbor had. at the advice of the rancher, gave the buffalo shots to calm them down for the long trip in the trailer back to Minnesota. Its about a 600 mile trip. When he get home he unloads them into this old barn. Now 5 hours later we get to the neighbors place in the evening about an hour before dark. This old barn has windows but they are partially boarded up and only let a little light in. The big door to the hay mow has fallen off so its wide open but its 12 feet up.
So here we are in the barn with the neighbor who is just popping his shirt buttons telling us all about his buffalo, The drugs have worn off and they are staring at us with wide eyes wondering where in the hell they are, this ain't home and just at that moment these 2 peacock fly through the hay mow door land on the floor joists above the buffalo and immediately they start screeching.
Well on the far wall was a window with one board missing, the setting sun shining through and that old bull didn't want anything to do with these goings on and went right through the barn wall window and the two cows went through the hole made by the bull side by side and made a larger hole and down the drive way they went. That was the damdest thing I ever saw I thought that old ramshackle barn was going to come down around are ears, but it didn't surprisingly. Down the drive way they went. Us after them with the pick-ups trying to keep track of where they went, and to top it off it's getting dark. Well they got away. It took a good month to get them buffalo back. Not far from us is a large wildlife area that covers about 6000 acres and that where they went. He played hell getting them out of there, in fact he had to tranquilize the bull to get him home.
In the mean time he realized that these weren't milk cows and he built a very sturdy pasture for them. he also built a new animal shed, the old barn wasn't worth fixing.
I can relate to the ranchers problem.
