I did have a story about bison versus buffalo. So basically, they’re two different animals, but in the United States, we use them sort of interchangeably incorrectly. So I have been told.
So, my sister works at [a wildlife sanctuary in] their nature center, learning center, whatever you want to call it. They have a building there that they do lots of programming in. And from that space they have lots of hiking trails, and in the winter when they have snow, like right now, they have ski trails that go from there and they have a rec building and all kinds of stuff happen on that property. So on that property, they have a herd — and I think herd is the correct term — of bison. And everyone who comes calls them buffalo.
And one of the main talking points, one of the key learning points for children and grown-ups who come to that center, or to that property, is to teach them that they are not buffalo. Even though they want to be called buffalo. Everyone wants to call them buffalo. And my sister has had so many kids that have looked at her like she has two heads when she tells them that they are bison, and that to call them buffalo is really incorrect. That they really are — they really are not bison, and they literally will tell her, “Yes, they are.” I mean, they will fight tooth and nail with her that what they are seeing is a buffalo because that really is what they — what they’re called here.
I mean, that, that’s totally what we associate that — the word we associate with that particular animal. But if you really look at a buffalo, like an African water buffalo, for example, it does not look like a bison. You know, does not look — doesn’t really look like it. And I’m sure that she’s told me where that confusion originally came from or how that kind of came to be but I don’t remember any of that.
But she is very — she gets a little, little hostile about it because she’s had to tell so many people that what they have there are, are bison and hopefully educate them and hopefully have them believe her when she tells them that they are, in fact, bison and not buffalo.