Expedition to Crater Hills

This morning I found a cute little golden-green frog. I was happy to see him with so many frogs dying from the chytrid fungus all over the world.

We saw these bison cows and calf along the road between Madison and Old Faithful. We programmed the GPS for Sulphur Springs and bounded out across Hayden in search of Crater Hills.

I found this toad in the grass. Two or three bull bison loitered on the outskirts of the meadow and Jeff kept nervous watch on them as we neared a clump of trees. The trees were obviously a popular bison hangout. They’d beaten the crap out of the ones at the edge of the meadow. We wondered if it was part of a forest eradication program run by the buffalo in hopes of creating more grazing land. We worried momentarily over a suspicious pile of warm scat. Was it too big to be wolf scat? Was it big enough to be bear scat?
All so unnerving was the fact that about half the trees in the area had been toppled – probably from routine straight-line wind.

Then we were out of the woods standing at the base of a tiny roaring mountain. Promising springs and fumaroles puffed and hissed all around us. I couldn’t wait to start exploring. But before I could decide what direction to head, a dark cloud swooped in and unleashed on us - rain, hail, thunder, lightning and Jeff without his raincoat. So we huddled together and wondered if we were about to be struck by lightning or crushed by a falling tree. The storm broke as abruptly as it had begun and since we were soaked, we decided to head back to the car. We started back into the woods and hadn’t quite reached the trees when a formidable, hair-raising and very near ROAR came out to greet us. We froze and glanced around as the roaring and growling continued, convinced that we were about to meet a grizzly. (Remember we had seen a possible bear poo at the edge of the trees) Jeff unholstered the bear spray. After several horrible seconds, a HUGE dark shape lumbered out of the trees toward us. When I recognized it was a bull bison I laughed with relief. Sure, bison have been known to toss, stamp and gore people to death regularly, but in my mind they are still herbivores and slightly more trustworthy than grizzlies. So we carefully detoured around the enraged animal (bison HATE thunder) and back out across Hayden to the Element.

On the way I snapped this photo of a bison skull.
I’ll just have to make it back to Crater Hills on a sunny day.