Liam and the White Bison

Liam loves bison. The bison is his favorite animal, and has been since he first saw them in North Dakota when he was little. Bison help him tap into the prairie landscape and Native American history.
White Cloud and this year's calf, who carries her albinistic genes...

And my little towhead has embraced the Native American reverence for the rare albino bison, and the white bison has become his spirit guide. Some kids have superheroes or the Incredible Hulk; my boy dreams of white bison. There's a symmetry to that which pleases me, especially since you can't tell a child what to dream of; he must come up with it on his own.

He watched the bison through a spotting scope for quite awhileand then let Phoebe have a turn while he called his friend Will in Ohio to tell him the amazing news that he, Liam, was standing before not one, not two, but three albino bison in Jamestown, North Dakota!

It was hard for Liam to convey to someone who's never dreamt of white bison what this meant to him. Perhaps his snow-white hair makes him feel a kinship with them the rest of us can't. He's a pale rider.

So I have found him a little turquoise deerskin pouch, and in the pouch is a carved white bison fetish, and a tuft of hair from the white bison at the Buffalo Museum. We got it by reaching through the chain link and grabbing it off some weedtops. He wears the pouch with its precious inclusions around his neck, and tries very hard not to take it off and forget where he put it down.



Liam's spirit pouch has already been forgotten in a pocket and sent through the wash once, and everything is fine, except that the wool no longer smells so deliciously of bison.

Liam asks me often if it's OK to have a favorite animal that is so rare. At a Montana museum, he saw and was deeply moved by an exhibit on the extermination of American bison. We reassure him that bison are still very much a part of the American landscape, and their numbers are rising again.
Even the white ones, the powerful and sacred ones.

White Bison

White Cloud at 13, June, 2009

The National Buffalo Museum in Jamestown, North Dakota, has cornered the market on white bison. On July 10, 1996, the day before Phoebe was born, a tiny albino calf was born in Michigan, North Dakota. She's a vanishingly rare creature, and she was named White Cloud. White Cloud went on to become a mother many times over. She threw four brown calves, and then in 2007 the impossible happened again: a white bull calf, Dakota Miracle, was born that August.

But the saga isn't over by any means. In May 2007, one of the Buffalo Museum's brown cows threw another white calf, and this one is named Dakota Legend. This is the only photo I was able to get of all three white bison in the same frame. It's tough when you're behind a 9' chain link fence. Dakota Legend is the calf in the foreground, with his brown mama. That's White Cloud in the middle, and Dakota Miracle following her.


It seems obvious to a Science Chimp that some of White Cloud's progeny must be involved in line breeding for albino bison. As in: This three-bison amazement is likely not the natural accident you might think it is. I'm guessing that a number of the wild type brown bison in this small herd of 30 may carry genes for albinism at this point. And being a recessive gene, both parents must carry it. The herd is maintained by the North Dakota Buffalo Foundation, and they have 200 acres of nice pasture to roam on both sides of Interstate 94. I honestly don't know if they're line breeding, but leaving a bunch of sorta related buffalo together who happen to carry genes for albinism is one way to get more white calves. And white calves bring the tourists in.

If I had to pick whether I wanted to be a normal brown bison or a white one, I'd pick A.

Melanin, it turns out, is a wonderful thing. It helps with vision and hearing. Animals that lack melanin in their eyes and ears can have very poor eyesight and hearing. This is why Dalmatians and even Boston terriers born with white ears can be deaf. Without the strengthening structure of melanin, eyes and ears don't work too well.

So white bison are a bit squinty, because the sun hurts their eyes. Make that quite squinty.

To be fair to the albino animals, no bison look their best in June, because that's when they shed their winter hair. This is Dakota Miracle, White Cloud's son. He'll be a wonderful bull someday! He's well on his way to magnificence.



The red stains are probably caused by yeast--you see them around the eyes and ears of white dogs all the time.
It does make you want to get in there and give them a good currying, though. Thing is, they wouldn't enjoy it, and neither would I. So I guess they'll just have to look scurfy until fall.

Tomorrow, I'll tell you about Liam and the white bison.