June has been an exciting time for wildlife in Yellowstone National Park. At the beginning of June, a mother elk was wandering around the outside of the hotel. She was, understandably, very aggressive to anyone who came near her or her baby. I didn’t see this happen, but I heard that over a week ago, the mother chased an employee and he pulled out his bear spray and sprayed her in the face. For those of you who don’t know, bear spray is high-powered pepper spray. The elk wasn’t hurt and she let the employee walk away, but I haven’t seen any elk since I heard of the incident.
A bigger threat in the Park is the bison. Bison, or American buffalo, are massive. They average around five to six feet in height and about nine feet in length. Their average weight ranges to about a thousand pounds, with the females being slightly smaller than the males. They go wherever they want and don’t care about who or what gets in their way. I’ve passed by quite a few bison and as long as you don’t bother them, they are more interested in grazing than they are of you. One morning, on the way to breakfast, there was a bison standing right in the middle of the path. I walked around him, but I could see two more bison standing nearby. The very next day, my brother and I had gone to the Ranger Station and were looking at a sign on their door saying to walk around and use the other entrance. We turned around and were about to do just that, when a bison ambled around the corner of the station, straight toward us. We beat a hasty retreat and, luckily, the bison didn’t follow. It took a while for my heart rate to go down after that.
Weather is intense in the Park. Last week, we’ve had snow and/or rain almost every afternoon. On the Summer Solstice, I woke up to find it had snowed in the night. It continued on into the afternoon. It was a busy time for hot chocolate and coffee in the deli. I even looked out the deli window and saw two bison in front of the hotel, grazing on the snow-covered grass.