A few weeks ago, a grungy ball of hair posing as a buffalo head was displayed on South Dakota State University’s campus green.
The scruffy mass was the front part of rival North Dakota State University’s mascot.
The buffalo head’s Oct. 25 appearance on the Jackrabbit campus was not only the first time ever that any part of a bison disfigured the local college green, but to rub more salt in the wound, it was also the first time in history that anything related to a bison was nationally televised on the SDSU campus green.
Blame it all on personable ESPN television announcer Lee Corso, who to his credit risked exposure to head lice, or worse, by donning the so-called bison likeness for a few minutes on national television’s College Game Day program.
I’ve added those embarrassing incidents to my list of “firsts” in the zoological history of Brookings County.
Here are some others:
The largest snake ever in Brookings County was found dead on Highway 14 east of Brookings in mid-September 1954 by college freshman Thomas Finley of Brookings. The python, 14 feet long, had fallen from a carnival truck.
The longest that a free-ranging quail has resided on Brookings’ Main Avenue is 30 days and counting. It has lived in the Streetscape foliage at Ray’s Corner since early October.
It’s watered and fed birdseed and unsalted popcorn by Ray’s Corner regulars. It takes short walks on the sidewalk searching for goodies and grit for its crop. It has apparently been injured and is unable to fly.
A male pheasant was the first ever to walk through the open front door of Dybdahl Motors on Fourth Street one block east of the Post Office on Oct. 19, 1956.
On July 16, 1995, Charlotte Smidt became the first Brookings resident ever to be mauled by a bear at her home at 117 Fourth St. She had 12 puncture wounds. The bear, owned by a neighbor, had escaped from its cage. It was later given to Watertown’s Bramble Park Zoo, where it eventually expired.
Speaking of bears, an SDSU women’s basketball player from White Bear, Minnesota, has adopted a stray cat that a week or so ago became the first cat ever to follow members of the SDSU men’s basketball team to their morning practice.
The cat took a liking to Jackrabbit men’s and women’s team members and the feeling was mutual.
For a few hours the orange and white orphan otherwise adrift in the cold was kept in a warm office while efforts to find its owners were made. None were found, so Jackrabbit women’s basketball sophomore Jordan Ferrand adopted the cat and named it Boots.
Boots was not at the Jackrabbits game Friday night at the Pentagon in Sioux Falls against Dakota Wesleyan, whose mascot is another orange and white cat – the Tiger.
On Aug. 28, 1952, Mrs. Swend Christensen looked out her kitchen window and saw an elephant in her garden. The critter was escorted back to the circus grounds.
An alligator was found in a window well of the Dr. R.N. Masson family at 805 Sixth St., on June 26, 1954.
On May 6, 1955, 450 day-old chicks survived a belly-landing at the Brookings Airport in a plane transporting the newcomers to the Brookings Hatchery.
An armadillo became a resident of Brookings in 1966, a gift from graduate student Tommy Davis to Professor Nell Hartwig of the Entomology-Zoology Department.
University Police on Sept. 14, 1998, for the first time in history, joined the search for a pet king cobra missing from the SDSU dorm room of senior Mark McKeown.
The first bighorn sheep “hunt” in Brookings was in January 1973. The animal escaped while being unloaded at the Agricultural Experiment Station to be a part of a Wildlife Department project. It was eventually found under the I-29 bridge over Six Mile Creek a mile north of Brookings.
Hero was the only elephant ever intentionally killed in South Dakota. It died of multiple gun shot wounds after escaping from a circus in Elkton on May 15, 1916.
State College students dissected Hero’s carcass, and the bones, the 950-pound hide and other organs were returned to the campus. After being stored at the college for 47 years, the bones were given to the W. H. Over Museum in Vermillion in 1963.
For those Jackrabbit fans planning to attend the SDSU-USD football game Nov. 23, leave early and check out Hero’s bones displayed there.
You’ll find the bones a block east of the Dakota Dome, where that afternoon under what is the most expensive taxpayer-funded roof in the history of South Dakota, you’ll find coyotes adorned in red and white.
