It’s hunting season again in the Great Plains, America’s cholesterol-clogged heartland, where the nation’s chronic buffalo infestation has reached critical levels. “They’re goddamn everywhere, like a swarm of big-headed land rats,” said homeowner David Hobarth. “I wish they were all dead.”
Not many people live in the West of the United States. Pioneers on the Oregon Trail found crossing these lands almost impossible, since buffalo are stinky and ugly and could provide no source of food for bonnet- and suspender-clad settlers.
“Ugh, those animals are just the worst,” said Wesleyan University’s Professor of American History Patricia Hill. “This continent would be much better if there were no Buffalo on it. It’s my number one complaint with America. If only they were like prairie dogs, which are now extinct because they were so tasty.”
Towns on the Great Plains have tried to incite the slaughter of buffalo though cash prizes, “Whack-a-Buffalo” Day, and Buffalo Trucks, which spew clouds of poisonous gas in the summer evening when the sunlight has only just faded and all the children frolicking in the misty street behind the trucks think this joy might last forever.
There’s been talk of introducing a targeted Buffalo plague or training tigers and panthers to hunt them, but residents aren’t too optimistic. “Their carcasses smell like dead skunks,” said Hobarth. “If only they were tasty enough to eat or intelligent enough to work in the circus. But they’re big stinky animals and there are too many of them. Where’s the day of reckoning for buffalo, that’s what I want to know. When will they pay for what they’ve done.”
