Stock photo of bison.  Photo: The Globe and Mail

The Running of the Bulls in Pamploma, Spain is an annual event where locals and tourists alike run through the streets of the city with bulls released for the purpose.  It's an annual spectacle where several people are gored each year.

Albertans have more experience with cattle, and the dumbest thing we typically do is irritate a bull's testicles and then try to ride it.  Still, it's a one on one encounter of animal vs man ... the average Albertan wouldn't even think of releasing a herd of cattle into the streets.  We call that a stampede, and we generally try to avoid it.

However, from time to time, things go awry.  The best laid plans, and all that.  Recently, in a medium sized town of Camrose, Alberta, a small herd of bison escaped their enclosure, causing chaos for the small community and local law enforcement.

"Up to 40 bison got out of their enclosure on Monday and many of the animals have turned up either wandering the streets of the city or running through the grounds of a golf course."

Two points on this immediately come to mind.  First, this brings a very creepy new meaning to the term "street walkers."  Second, and this is perhaps the far more important point ... do you get a drop from a bison hazard, or do you have to play it where it lies?  As a further corollary to point 2,  how exactly does one classify bison hair?  Is it deep rough, or have we gone into the feskue range at that point?

At any rate, the bison are proving to be an elusive prey.  Police say 10 bison, of the up to 50 that originally escaped, have been recaptured.  8 of the exhausted animals were recaptured near the Camrose landfill, where they'd apparently gone to sleep off their night walking the streets.  They were loaded onto trailers and returned home.

Grazing near a patch of highway northeast of Canmore, one of the still escaped animals was quoted as saying "We were just looking for a good time.  And its not like it was a big herd.  Hell, we probably caused fewer problems than the average university pub crawl."