Liam and Bison

 A Carolina wren pair raised a brood of babies in Liam's bison skull, which hangs on the side of our garage. He found it on a bison ranch in North Dakota years ago...maybe 2008, and he wanted it so badly, but we were flying and it wasn't exactly carryon size. Our friends the Ashers from Cincinnati volunteered to bring it back in their van for us. And darned if Jean didn't get it to us, and up it went on the garage under the eave, and there it has hung ever since.

Photo by Rondeau Ric

There is a classic post about how Liam found that skull and lost his stuffed monkey at the same time.
Read it here.


 Flashing forward six years...I kept seeing the wrens perched on the skull with food in their bills, and it took me a little while to realize that they had made a neat little nest down inside the brain case. Before long we could hear the baby wrens piping in there, and soon they were big enough that the adults would pop onto the skull, poke a spider or caterpiggle into the foramen magnum, and be gone. They were a very sneaky wren family, and I never saw them fledge. I think they did it during a thunderstorm when I was inside all day. When we took the skull down to look there was feather sheath dust in the nest, which generally means the babies made it to fledging. Being wrens, they kept their nest spic and span.

I got to thinking about Liam and bison. About all the times we've had with bison.

The bison is Liam's totem, and he was obsessed with them for a long time. It was a nice obsession, one we were happy to indulge. 

In 2009, when he was 10, we took him to Jamestown, North Dakota, which has two white bison--one the male calf of the first female they got. This is her.

And here's her boy calf, with the long thin horns.

OK, they don't look too great in June, because they're shedding old winter hair. Liam didn't mind. He was transfixed. He watched them through the spotting scope.

Then he called his friend Will back in Ohio to tell him all about it. 

In 2010, when Liam was 11, we had the most awesome family trip ever to western North Dakota, Montana and Yellowstone.

In Medina, ND, we tracked bison in the weird clay that makes up Teddy Roosevelt National Park.

And found this monstrous gentleman scratching himself on a guard rail.

Now that's a BISON.

We saw a candidate for some Darwinian selection.

Who was fortunately not selected out, at least while we were watching.

After both of them left, we went and looked at the shiny rail. Obviously he comes here often.

We spotted our first-ever elk.

and bought Liam a NDSU hat at Scheel's in Fargo.

I can't see to type.

 I'll be going out to North Dakota by myself this year, to work the 11th annual Potholes and Prairie festival. Bill's got other travel; Phoebe's got a job, and Liam wants to spend as much time as he can with his sister. They've been biking and swimming and reading together under the Japanese maple. I'll be doing my last packing as you read this.

I am thankful for all the times we've taken Phoebe and Liam along. I'll miss them terribly this year. 

Life changes on you, and before you know it the kids are elsewhere, no longer in the back seat wherever you go. That's when the memories kick in. 

These photos all raise such a lump in my throat I need to stop writing now. 

This grand and glorious bull said good-bye to us on our last day in Yellowstone in 2010.

It is something, to have an animal the size of a car, that could squash you in a New York minute, scratching itself on a lamppost right handy by.

There is nothing like showing an animal like that to your kids. I'm so glad we did, when we could, because animals like this one don't come along every day.

Neither do boys like Liam.