Osmosis.

We spend a lot of time in a nearby national park, sometimes up to three or four nights a week, courtesy of our hobbies (night photography and astronomy). We have our favourite lake, we have our favourite views, and we have our favourite trails.

The best thing about the park is that it only starts to really come alive at dusk. The coyotes start to howl, the beavers finish off their work and can be seen scurrying around the dens, the owls compete with the geese for who can be the most obnoxious. I love nature. Oh....and the bison herds start moving around looking for a good place to sleep.

Which is how we found ourselves trapped, in our car, in the middle of a herd at least 80 (I stopped counting at that point) animals large as they were crossing from one side of the road to the other. The thing with bison is that they are bat-fucking-shit crazy. They are the Naomi Campbell of the wildlife kingdom. They will look all calm and serene and then, without warning, BAM! BISON CHOP TO YOUR SPLEEN.

I really wanted to take a picture, and even pulled out the camera, until B reminded me that all the little flashing lights we could see were the eyes that were looking RIGHT AT US. Like fuck I'm going to blind a herd of bison. I may be adventurous (I told you a few weeks ago I wasn't crazy, so get off my back), but I'm not stupid. So you'll just have to trust me that the car was stopped on the road surrounded by slow moving bison who were just waiting for us to sneeze, or look at them wrong, to trample the car and leave our tale to the good people at the Darwin Awards.

What is our heroine to do? She's going to whisper, for starters.

"Just keep driving. Slowly."

"How exactly am I supposed to not hit ANY OF THE MASSIVE ANIMALS ON THE ROAD?"

"SHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! It's like Frogger. But....really slow. And we're the frogs but not on the road and then the bison become the traffic so I suppose that technically my Frogger comparison breaks down here."

"Frogger had room to move. We are surrounded on all sides with no room to move through the herd."

"If we keep rolling, slowly, maybe they'll get used to the motion and move out of the way?"

"Or we could gently roll into the side of a sleeping bison and wake it up."

"WWOAD?"

"Huh?"

"What would our ancestors do?"

"Spoken like someone who isn't so Scandinavian her skin glows in the middle of the night."

"HEY. Porcelain skin, asshole."

"You are the whitest person I have ever known. And I don't mean that culturally."

"WE ARE SUPPOSED TO BE TALKING ABOUT OSMOSISING OURSELVES FROM THIS SITUATION."

"Would you shut up? There are more looking this way. And I don't think you know what osmosis is."

"We want to be on the other side of the membrane, if you know what I mean."

"Science is ashamed of you."

"Wouldn't be the first time."

"We should really grab the park ranger's phone number and have it on speed dial from now on."

"Let's just hope we don't have to integrate into the bison society in order to escape. I have a feeling I'd be really susceptible to the situation and would wind up with Stockholm Syndrome. Wikipedia would not be kind to my plight. Or Fark. Those fucking assholes would rip me a new one. What the hell do they know about survival? About roughing it and doing whatever it takes to stay alive in a society of creatures with the mental instability of a supermodel, but weigh half a ton each? They don't know how good they've got it."

"....next time you bring your DS."

Twenty minutes later we cleared the herd. And ran into a Yeti. That is fact*.

*depending on which one of us you talk to