“What are they like?” I asked the woman at the Georgia Buffalo Ranch on Highway 17 in McIntosh County as we scooted through the electric wire that, she assured me, was not activated. I still look for sheetrock when driving down Hwy. 17, thanks to Melissa Faye Greene and her incredible book about a people and a county, “Praying for Sheetrock.” But now there are buffalo, a couple miles south of the Smallest Church in America.
“Aggressive,” Sherry DiSimone said without hesitation. “They’re aggressive.”
That’s when I changed my mind and handed her the bag of treats I just bought for $2. Something about their long, thin grey tongue (“just like a giraffe’s tongue,” she said). And their long wooly coat, which looks like dreadlocks. A little scary. Each one of those suckers weighs in the range of 1,850 pounds. They are broad in the shoulder with giant humps, square faces and bulging eyes. There are 40 buffalo at the Ranch, including eight bulls. We were feeding bull No. 5, but Get Her Done was lumbering up from the back of the pack.
The good news is the country’s buffalo population is up to 600,000 from an 1847 low of 800. The bad news is the cost of a skull: they start at $130.
Two little wires between them and us
