Prairie Enigma

Prairie Enigma . . . by Margie Willis

A pasty sky loiters over the sprawling prairie in a stance of tortured reckoning as a sporadic tumbleweed somersaults through the squandered buffalo range. An oxpecker wannabe jigs from one hairy spine to the next in search of a steady pelt that needs bug management. A lagging flock of Canadian geese hitches onto a southern bluster while scattering a fluster of honks.

Buffy the bison scrapes her hoof across the ice crust, not freeing any of the dry prairie grass shielded by an unbroken pane. Winter forage is becoming more obscure with each elusive eon. Forlorn minstrels reminisce about when the Plains used to be scorched to a rusty-brown char by a million of their brethren pawing the frozen mantle into a melting rubble. Recalling times when fodder was tidy under hoof.

An old cow named Crone saunters up behind Buffy and stops to pity this vulnerable young hussy, “how’s the grassy gambol going?”

Six frisky prairie dogs pop up, armpit-deep in their scattered burrows, waiting to find out if an influx of brutes might require defense of their vittles.

“I don’t have a bit of strength in my neck and shoulders since I tumbled down the steep ravine . . . back when we were all stampeded over the chalk cliffs last summer,” Buffy tries to turn her vast head toward the approaching cow but she’s too stiff so she settles for nattering to an inattentive tumbleweed.

“Well, at least you weren’t one of the front runners, out ahead of the crowd!” Still peeved that her champion bull was recently crushed under a heap of buffalo carcasses, Crone can scrape together no empathy for Buffy's stiff neck.

A plucky wren lights on the old cow’s brow to quaff a tear or two.

“Well, at least you were chosen by a leading bull when you were my age and you two were lucky to be roaming the prairie together until you both got old and decrepit!” Still throbbing over her fruitless rut this past autumn, Buffy expected to be eating for two during her second winter on this planet.

“You could’ve been,” Crone spats out a stray pebble.

“What does that mean?” Buffy snorts a cloud of vapor.

The cynical old cow grunts away her wren friend after his bold warbling pounds her eardrums, “didn’t you notice Bully when he was doing his rut?”

“No, what? Where did Bully do his rut last season?” The young cow is staggered that this old biddy seems to know more about what’s going on in her own life.

“That dufus is lately strutting his mojo in all the pathetic places!” Crone carps on Buffy’s failure to notice and welcome the most convincing bull on the Plains. “Clearly, Bully was holding out his hopes for you, Buffy, despite every other cow giving him a saucy rumba rump with triple tail-swish whenever he looked in her direction,” the old cow judders her oversized head. “But now he just wanders the Plains listlessly, without his usual high stamina . . . one might think he’s feeling a wee bit dejected.”

“Do you mean to say Bully was rutting for me last season?”

“I don’t just mean to say it, I AM saying it!” Crone bashes her big buffered skull against a boulder in exasperation.

Buffy’s pelt quivers with self-doubt, “I seriously doubt it.”

“Sure, he was! But you were nowhere to be found,” Crone fake-laments.

“I stayed clear because I was positive he meant to court that curvy cow with the curly blond topnotch!” Buffy reels with regret.

“I saw it all, my infantile friend. Obvious as snow flurries against the nearby plum ridges. Buffy and Bully roaming the far reaches of the grasslands, studiously avoiding each other. You two were both looking so smug, so sure what the other one must be thinking and feeling,” the old cow heaves her hoof down hard, cracking the ice sheet with a strident thwack . . . an exclamation prior to her exit stomp.

Listening to the heavy cross-country thundering with crackles fading in the distance, Buffy thinks: I won’t miss that glowering cloud bank one bit.

Spotting the pulverized ice left behind by that crotchety old cow, she tries to kick aside some chunks, hoping to reach the dry prairie grass underneath. But still, her stiff neck and shoulders resist her painful efforts.

The oxpecker wannabe hopscotches across random prairie pelts and skids to a stop upon Buffy’s rump, a landing that’s intended to alert her.

Earlier, Bully had moseyed up to eavesdrop on the conversation between cows. All these months he was so sure Buffy wanted nothing to do with him and that’s why he has hidden his feelings, afraid to be snubbed. He almost fails to step up and seize this opening, seeing that it’s a good time to scour the cottonwoods and buff his horns until they twinkle. But instead, he summons his courage and thunders, “may I help you reach that fodder?”

The prairie dogs had quickly lost interest when the two cows were chewing the chin-wag . . . but as soon as Bully steps up with courtship emanating from his ebony eyes, sixteen sycophants from the dog clan do the burrow bop so they can tune into to this heart-throb moment.

Buffy opens her mouth, intending to reply, but only her huffing haze puffs into the brisk air after she takes a gander at Bully’s thick strong neck. So massive for snow sweeping. Such a testimonial to his virility. Why hadn’t she noticed such a sturdy and enticing neck before?

After Bully scrapes away a large patch of snow and ice, he steps back to let Buffy graze first. She steps in, unable to resist nuzzling his icy dripping beard, thinking: I never saw such a long luxurious beard!

Thanks to face fur, they don’t see each other blush . . . continuing their charade . . . only a minor feeding frenzy and nothing more cunning going on here.

The wooley pair crunch and crop the moist golden strands, hunkering cheek to cheek as the winter sun falters in a sinister sky.