Behold the female pronghorn! The animal was semi-corralled beside the fence, allowing me to ease the car quite close, but carefully, lest I frighten her into jumping over. She could probably do this—[nope, see comments!]—but you never know. I’d never had such a view of one and thought it looked quite strange, not at all the way I’d have imagined they were built from observing them at a distance. I suspect the mane and hair along her back are raised out of alarm. This was one of dozens we saw on May 4th on the edge of the plains between Rayado and Cimarron, about ninety minutes from home.
I appreciate that most of you have never seen what some folks call an antelope up close, nor even realized that such beasts are found on Earth and live completely free, demanding nothing of us two-leggeds. It’s still a wonderment to me, and as I’ve mentioned many times, another reason why we busted ass and took the risks and tore ourselves away from all we knew and loved to come here.
John Hamilton Farr lives at 7,000 feet in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico, U.S.A. As New York Times best-selling author James C. Moore tells it, John is “a man attuned to the world who sees it differently than you and I and writes about it with a language and a vision of life that is impossible to ignore.” This JHFARR.COM site is the master writing archive. To email John, please see CONTACT INFO on .png)
Pronghorns do not jump well. Fastest animal in North America but only horizontally. I remember the sad sight of dead pronghorns draped over barbed wire fences on trips through Wyoming and Montana. I’ve heard that they now make underpasses on highways for the pronghorns to follow their migration routes. This one appears to have had something around her neck.
Aha! Well, all the more reason not to frighten this one. Good to know.
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