Joining In

Somewhere around ten years ago, while driving across the open prairie we call Townsend Flats, I saw a cow elk running across the expanse with a band of antelope.  I saw the same cow hanging out with the band of antelope on a couple occasions following this first sighting.  When standing there, big as a horse, among the diminutive antelope (they not much larger than German shepherd dogs), the elk was certainly conspicuous.  But the behavior of the cow elk, and the conduct of the diminutive pronghorns with her, clearly indicated she was, well, an antelope.

An antelope to be reckoned with.

Sometime after I saw the elk, our local newspaper featured a front page article about the cow elk and her band of antelope.  According to the article, Montana Fish and Game Department officials had been paying attention to the elk for quite some time.  They theorized that the elk probably got trapped inside a fenced area with the antelope when she was too small to jump the fence and rejoin her own kind.  They suspected she fell in with the antelope and remained with them.

The antelope liked her.

Apparently, the cow elk and her band of antelope had been observed milling about within only a few yards of elk herds on many occasions, but the cow remained loyal to her band and stuck with them.

This story has been enough to sustain me on several dark occasions.

—Mitchell Hegman