Prairie Dogs, Buffalos and A Honda Civic

I remember when we were stationed at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, we liked to go visit the Wichita Wildlife Refuge.  Once we stopped at the Prairie Dog Town which the girls really liked. The prairie dogs would run in and out of their homes (holes). They would chase each other chattering and barking. If I remember correctly, we could feed them dried apple pieces, which they would eat sitting up. We took the girls to the town whenever we could.

One time, I came home from work and suggested that we go the Wildlife Refuge. Brenda had already prepared our dinner (meatloaf and lima beans) so she just left them in the pot, packed up paper plates, & drinks and we headed out. Now you have to understand that it was probably already 4 or 5 when I got home so it was getting late by the time we got to the Refuge. Even though we got a late start, we saw a lot of buffalo and longhorn steer, and we all were really enjoying the trip. After a while Brenda suggested, that we probably should find a place to stop. I said I would find a place, but came upon a herd of buffalo and watched them for a while. Now I realized that it was getting late and that I had better find a place to park. Of course now there was no place in sight to have a picnic, it was getting dark, so we decided to just pop the hatch and eat in the back of the car. It was now dark and when you are out in a wildlife refuge there are no lights so it was really really dark. We had just started eating and began to hear a snorting sound. The sound begin to get louder and louder and closer and closer.

We all scrambled over the seats toward the front of the Honda. We looked and a buffalo put its head into the car through the open hatch. The girls were screaming, Brenda was strongly encouraging me to go, I dropped the keys and was having trouble finding them. Finally, found the keys and raced away with the hatch open. We only slowed down to close the hatch when we were sure we could not even hear anything that remotely sounded like a snort. Oklahoma has a lot of good memories for us.