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Tales from Exit 22 by Al Batt

I wasn’t shuffling off to Buffalo.

Nor was I off to dance the bison-nova.

My wife and I went to Minneopa State Park to see the bison. The bison are usually called buffalo. Minneopa is outside Mankato, Minnesota. It’s Mankato, no matter how you pronounce it.

Minneopa has a herd of 33 bison. That iconic song “Home on the Range” is incorrect. Buffalo never roamed the range, but bison did and do. The terms are used interchangeably, but are distinct animals. Buffalo (Cape and water buffalo) are native to Africa and Asia, while bison inhabit North America and Europe. Buffalo Bill should have been Bison Bill.

We were stampeded by 33 bison. It was frightening. There were only two things that saved us. One, we were in a car. Two, the bison were in more of a mosey mode than in a stampede gear. I knew because I’d been in a stampede before. It was on the outskirts of Kearney, Nebraska, in the massive Archway, formerly the Great Platte River Road Archway, where Jack Nicholson filmed a scene for the movie “About Schmidt.” The Archway pays tribute to the pioneers who trekked across the country on Nebraska’s Great Platte River Road — the Oregon, Mormon and California trails. It has windows with radar guns that allow visitors to see the speeds of the 20,000 vehicles going under the 308-foot Archway daily on I-80. At least two of those automobiles will be obeying the speed limit.

My bride and I have been there — equipped with headphones that allowed us to hear the bison pictured stampeding across a wall as we felt the ground shaking under our feet.

Why do bison stampede? They do it because they want to be first in line to get tickets for a Taylor Swift concert. They’re big Swifties. The problem with having hooves is that it doesn’t allow purchasing tickets online.

I donned a buffalo robe in Montana. It was as heavy as an entire bison. Stampeding must have been exhausting for the original owner. I visited First Peoples Buffalo Jump State Park near Ulm,

Montana, a site with possibly the largest bison cliff jump in North America. Below that mile-long sandstone cliff, there were 18 feet of compacted bison remains. Runners, skilled young men trained for speed and endurance, wore buffalo, antelope or wolf skins to lure bison to the “pishkun” or cliff. Native people stampeded herds of bison off the cliff. Bison provided the people with food, clothing and shelter.

Not all bison stampede. I’ve stood next to the World’s Largest Buffalo Monument standing tall on a hill in Jamestown, North Dakota. This 26-foot-tall concrete giant is named Dakota Thunder. He doesn’t eat much or stampede.

Bison stampede because they don’t like to be called buffalo. Lemmings don’t care what you call them, they’re not stampeding. “What?” you say. “Everyone knows lemmings are world-class stampeders.”

In 1958, Walt Disney produced “White Wilderness.” The crew was brainstorming when a guy probably named Maynard said, “I got it!” Let’s find rodents that don’t look too much like Mickey Mouse and chuck them into the river.”

It fit into the budget. Thanks to Maynard, who might have been a local prankster, the film featured a segment on lemmings (a vole-like rodent), detailing their strange compulsion to commit mass suicide by leaping into the ocean. The filmmakers threw the lemmings off a cliff. I wonder if people were listed as “lemming tossers” in the end credits? It was filmed in Alberta, Canada, a landlocked province. Lemmings were shown dropping into the water, and a shot captured the water teeming with dying lemmings. The voice-over implied lemmings jumped every seven to 10 years to ease overpopulation. The lemmings didn’t get that memo. They are excellent swimmers, rumored to have trained Michael Phelps.

The Minneopa stampede went on for a long time. The 33 bison were in no hurry. The calves weigh 30 to 70 pounds at birth, growing to 1,000 pounds for cows and up to 2,000 pounds for bulls.

Teddy, the herd bull with a cartoonishly colossal head, tips the scale at 1,700 pounds. You don’t get that big by hurrying.

I’ll be driving on Interstate 494 today.

I expect a vehicle stampede.

Al Batt’s columns appear in the Tribune every Wednesday.