Pet Buffalo Still Roaming the Trails
Tim Mowry, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
A Fairbanks farming couple is still searching for a pet buffalo that escaped from its pen on Sunday night after a moose knocked a fence down.
There has been no sign of “Buffy,“ a 5-year-old adult cow bison, since she walked off Sunday night, said the animal’s owner Edo Van Bueren.
Van Bueren and his wife, Jeanette, operate a small farm on 10 acres off Farmers Loop near the Alaska Dog Mushers’ Association mushing trails. They suspect the buffalo is wandering the trails or is camped in the woods.
» Read the rest.
Believe it or not, buffalo are not at all uncommon up there. One nearby neighbor of ours when we lived in the area had a small herd on his acreage outside of North Pole, and there’s a free-range herd in Delta Junction, about 100 miles southeast of Fairbanks, that is actually legal to hunt (in season, and with the right paperwork). Two “Buffalo Center” establishments in Delta—one a drive-in, the other a diner—include buffalo burgers on the menu.
Domesticated buffalo herds are fairly common all over, in fact. At least one farm that I know of runs a pretty sizeable herd right here in Coweta County, near the tiny incorporated town of Turin. And between Red Ted Turner’s overhyped and overpriced “Montana Grill” chain and the much more congenial Smokey Bones restaurants, buffalo meat can be had even here in west Georgia.
Of course, the best buffalo meal I ever had was on September 18, 1999—at the steak restaurant inside the Hitching Post Inn in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
<licks chops>
Anyway, here’s hoping Tasty—I mean Buffy—is returned safe to her family.
