FARR WEST -- Cathy Hayes has spent the last 11 years teaching thousands of Ben Lomond High School students how to put together a yearbook, so she may be forgiven for being just a bit irked that her big moment of fame, her shot in the national spotlight, is for being buffaloed by a bison.
Actually, not even for that. It's not unheard of for people and bison to encounter each other at Yellowstone National Park.
What she did different was to get it on video, including when the critter hit her.
Video makes the experience solid gold.
Local news media have been all over her. " 'Inside Edition' just left," she said, and she was busy Thursday afternoon packing to fly to New York to be on the "CBS Early Show" today.
All this over an incident that lasted, maybe, 10 seconds. Then again, it was a very big bison.
Hayes, 49, said she, her husband and some friends were in Yellowstone National Park for a week starting last weekend.
Monday evening, "we were taking pictures of the hot pots at Biscuit Basin, just some beautiful shots as the sun was going down."
Her husband waited in the car while Hayes and a friend took the photos.
"My husband yelled at us 'Cathy! Buffalo! Buffalo!' and we looked and you could see a buffalo just meandering across the parking lot."
Which would have been fine except her friend, an older man who she said declines to have his name published, wanted a closer look.
He walked through a small line of trees toward the bison, and Hayes followed, all the while shooting video.
It was against her better judgment, she said. "I said 'Wait wait, it's going to be like running of the bulls, you getting gored by the buffalo.' " She had no idea how close it would come to that.
In the video, the bison can be seen standing, then flipping its head. At that moment something white and about 10 inches long flips off its horn and hits the bison on the back.
That did it.
"He thought we did it," she said. The bison kicked up its heels and charged, first her friend, then her.
Her friend ran, tripped on a nearby walkway and fell, breaking his shoulder. The bison turned, heading for Hayes.
"I ran into a clump of trees, that protected me," she said, but when the bison readied another charge, she ran for the car.
"And that's when he got me in the left thigh. He gouged me, and I went up, end over end."
She landed on her face, smashing her right knee into the ground. "He was right over me. I could hear him snorting and snuffing."
Her husband got out of the car and tried to distract the bison but she figured this was the end. "I so was waiting for him to crush my head," she said, but the bison moved on.
They went to Grants Village, then Jackson, but couldn't get a lot of medical aid for her injuries because her insurance wouldn't pay for it.
Now she's home icing her knee, which swelled up to the size of a melon but has since gone down.
And she's dealing with media attention. She sent the video to one local TV station, the others have picked it up, and Thursday evening she flew to New York and national TV.
"I figure, what the heck, I got some good footage," she said. "Maybe it will keep other people from doing the same thing."
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