Although I must confess, not without a certain patriotic blush, my preference for the American species, yes, you know, the bison that inhabit Yellowstone, the European bison, which from now on will concern us, is also of considerable zoological and aesthetic appeal. A beautiful, rough, strong and almost mythological animal. The American bovid, unlike the European, is more stubborn, corpulent, especially bearded, with its gaze hidden among a swarm of hair. resounding With short, dark horns and an almost two-tone coat that is lighter as the skin progresses towards the slightly more drooping hindquarters. A giant of grass and water. An emotion in motion. The so-called buffalo was, like the pig still for us, used for everything, or usable, from the most basic food to the magical and supernatural powers that the real Indians and those in the movies attributed to it, perhaps with a certain solvency. That those of us from the neighborhood have the culture that we have and we learned almost everything in the cinema.
Butcher Crossing is a wonderful book by John Williams whose central adventure is the relationship between man and the bison. A rural drama. A bad movie. An unusual western. Poetic.
But the fact is that in our homeland, scientists, zoologists and other specialists do not agree on whether these fascinating animals once lived in our geographies. Read in La Vanguardia under the authorship of Antonio Cerrillo. The return of the Bison bonasus has its opponents who doubt its ancient existence in the Peninsula and say that we cannot protect or reintroduce a species that has not existed here before. Wow! And what about Altamira? So, the Neanderthal who painted in the most famous caves was an impostor? An artist of great imagination? A painter of dreams and nightmares? Someone who represented what did not exist? Another occasion for science and art to contradict each other. It’s natural: parallel paths that don’t touch. And in the end it will turn out that the bison arrived before the bull, so all the literature and poetry, good as well, with the name “the Bull’s Skin” must be renamed “the Bison’s Skin.” Oh! I don’t know.
