Bison: Page Four
Home
Table of Contents
Translator with Jeffrey
PROLOGUE
The Locusts on Migration
Migration: Page Two
Migration: Page Three
Migration: Page Four
The Poet's Introduction
Intro: Page Two
Intro: Page Three
Intro: Page Four
Intro: Page Five
Intro: Page Six
Intro: Page Seven
Intro: Page Eight
Intro: Page Nine
Intro: Page Ten
Intro: Page Eleven
Intro: Page Twelve
Intro: Page Thirteen
The Bison's Tale
Bison: Page Two
Bison: Page Three
Bison: Page Four
The Serpent's Tale
Serpent: Page Two
Serpent: Page Three
Serpent: Page Four
Serpent: Page Five
The Salmon's Tale
Salmon: Page Two
Salmon: Page Three
A Whale of a Tale
Whale: Page Two
Whale: Page Three
Whale: Page Four
Whale: Page Five
Whale: Page Six
Whale: Page Seven
Whale: Page Eight
Whale: Page Nine
The Hummingbird's Tale
Hummingbird: Page Two
Hummingbird: Page Three
Hummingbird: Page Four
Hummingbird: Page Five
Hummingbird: Page Six
The Tern's Tale
Tern: Page Two
Tern: Page Three
Tern: Page Four
Contact the Author
The Cricketary Tales of Jeffrey Jawser

They slit us from jaw down the belly to the tail and ripped off our skins with rope and horse. They sliced off our tongues: 2,000,000 of us cut down one year for our tongues alone. They ground up our bones for use as fertilizer. In Cansass alone, in less than twenty years, 31,000,000 bison butchered for their bones!

Meat and hides and robes - hew and hack and slaughter: "The most remorseless and ceaseless slaughter of wild animals in all history."

And so we come back around to the question that puzzles you and tortures us: could we have escaped this slaughter to near extinction?

I don't know. How did we trip; where did we blunder? Strength, courage, agility, speed? What was lacking? Damnit, how it torments me! Our senses were acute enough. We could smell them a mile away. We can hear the snap of a twig from five hundred feet. We can see movement for more than a mile.

What was wrong with us?

Were we starved and wasted? No! The massive and ferocious grizzly could not conquer the bison. Yes, we were unbeatable in a fair fight. I say a FAIR fight: beast to beast - Homo sapien against bison - anytime, anywhere!

But that damn thing they called a rifle. Yet that wasn't much. The balls bounced off our foreheads. Ah, but the slugs, the bullets that pierced the lungs and heart - two inches of lead ripping into... Is it true we did stand and sit while they did shoot and shoot..? I don't know, I don't know...

Help me my friends. Where did we stumble? This bone of contention... I must... Craftiness and cunning! Where did we go wrong? What was missing?

I must rest my mind. My mind, my brain... I weep for the buffalo brain. And so ends the bison's tale.

End of the Bison?