Nothing is simple.
Until we can finish landscaping, when we bring a wolf to the yurt for a weekly healing session we have to cross Bluebell’s territory and walking path. Because she is such a “watch” buffalo we first have to bribe and distract her. She wants nothing  in her pasture that is new, uninspected and unapproved. She is quite clear about it. Humans – yes. MacDougal the Clydesdale – no choice. He is a lot bigger than she is and he lets her know it.
Foffy the mustang – Bluebell tolerates her because she’s able to dominate her and it makes her feel better after being humiliated by MacDougal.  And after seven unhappy mutual years together they have reached an understanding — Bluebell tosses her head, Foffy runs. Very satisfying.  But…. when there is fresh hay, Foffy sidles over to MacDougal to share his food, nickering, submitting and flirting skillfully and MacDougal cannot resist her golden female beauty. So she eats and enjoys his protection as Bluebell alternately longs, and glowers, a short distance away.  All in all it is an arrangement that works.
We immediately feed Bluebell after MacDougal but he always takes the first helping no matter where we put it.   Bluebell has to wait until we put another pile far enough away so that MacDougal feels it is not worth his time and energy to chase her away.  He does sometimes, however,  think her hay must be better and then there is a rapid switching of positions, MacDougal striding forcefully; Foffy following “meekly” behind, Bluebell snorting and making a wide circle back to where MacDougal was just eating.
But, should a wild coyote run across the pasture, that hapless creature would have 1,000 pounds of furry brown fury thundering after it. And a wolf on a leash? A suspicious character. Buffalo fodder. So we have to put her elsewhere with lots of hay.
However she has become much sweeter and more tractable since we lost her companion-buffalo, Rosebud. She is very lonely and has adopted humans as her herd, though we don’t come around often enough to really fill her needs.
We can count on it … any time we go to the yurt, within moments we hear crunch crunch crunch.  Winding her way through the snow, she looks up the steps longingly at us.  Bluebell then promptly lies down in the middle of the path so that we have to dig a passage in the snow to go around her.  It breaks our heart so to see her looking up the steps — though we are happy she hasn’t decided to climb them and try to enter the door to join us.  There wouldn’t be much left of the yurt. Interestingly, the other place we often find her is by the bear enclosures. Perhaps she likes the company of other big brown furry creatures. We are hoping to buy a  baby from a buffalo farm if possible this year ( we are not allowed to accept orphans from the wild). We’ll keep you posted…

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