The Bison's Egg

The jaguars at our zoo proved to be remarkably difficult animals to enrich.  Having gone much of their early lives without enrichment, they fell into the mindset that anything placed in their exhibit with them was food, and therefore tried to eat every toy that they were given.  To prevent this from happening, the zoo purchased the biggest, hardest ball that could be found, three feet in diameter, secure in knowledge that the cats wouldn't be able to damage it.  Nor were they able to - the problem was, they also didn't interact with it at all.  One keeper hit upon the idea of giving the ball to the bison for a few days, letting them get their scent on it, and then giving it back to the jaguars, hoping that they'd now be more interested.

It was a solid plan.  But the ball never made it back to the jaguars.  Our male bison fell in love with it, and we never had the heart to take it away.

He would play with it for hours at a time, using his massive head to knock it around his yard until the exhibit was criss-crossed with the ruts the ball and had in its frequent trips around the habitat.   We used to joke that the most dangerous place to be in the entire zoo wasn't in with the big cats or bears, but between the bull bison and his ball.  Sometimes he gave it a little push.  Sometimes, he would absolutely whack it, and it would hit a fence and ricochet, or sometimes clear the moat and land outside of the exhibit.  When this happened, he would pace frantically along the fenceline, as close as he could get to his beloved ball, until one of us would come down and (laboriously) toss it back to him.  Once, I threw it back over to him, only for him to knock it it straight back to me, sending me sprawling on the pavement.  

At night, he always slept next to it.

For some reason, the members of the public never could quite make sense of the bison's attachment to the ball.  Surely, I thought, many of them had pets who had a favorite toy, so why couldn't they understand that this animal had one also?  Maybe in their minds bison were too stupid, too simple to enjoy a toy.  Instead, many of them, independently, decided that the bison was a female, and the ball was "her" egg.  Sure, it may have been ridiculously out of proportion for it - it would have been like a chicken lying an egg the size of a grapefruit.  Observant visitors may have noticed the lettering etched on the side of the "egg."  And surely no mother would knock her egg around quite like this?  Still, the story persisted, and people seemed incredulous to learn that it was just a favorite toy.

When the old male bison eventually passed, we had a spirited discussion about burying the ball with him - none of the other bison seemed nearly as attached to it or as interested in it as he was, probably because he never had let them even touch it before.

Keepers often form special bonds with their animals, which can be beautiful things that I've written about here before.  There are, of course, also the bonds that the animals form with each other.  Sometimes, relations form between animals and visitors.  But so far, I don't think I've seen a love affair at a zoo quite like this bison and his ball.