A woman who was gored by a bison on Monday at Yellowstone National Park has something to celebrate after surviving that harrowing ordeal: an engagement.
Amber Harris, the 47-year-old Phoenix resident who was attacked by the bison, posted on Facebook that her boyfriend Chris Whitehill got down on one knee beside her hospital bed. And, of course, she said yes!
The pair were vacationing in Yellowstone with Harris’ daughter Rylee Eckblad, a trip they had been planning for a year, when the goring happened. Whitehill was going to propose that week, but on the first morning of their trip, tragedy struck.
Harris writes that she and Whitehill took a morning stroll through a field to get to Yellowstone Lake when they first came across a pack of 20 elk. They waited for the elk to clear before continuing through the field when they spotted two bison.
One was on the path they were walking, about 45 metres ahead of them.
“We stopped and looked at the massive beast, about 50 yards away on the trail, hidden at first in the shadows of the trees. We watched him drop and roll in the dirt, like a dog would,” Harris writes.
The National Park Service (NPS) advises visitors to stay at least 23 metres (25 yards) away from large animals like bison, so it appears the pair were following guidelines. But bison can be unpredictable, park officials say, especially during the mid-July to mid-August mating season.
The bison got up and started walking, then charged towards the couple. Bison can run three times faster than humans, park officials say.
Whitehill told local KPNX of Phoenix that the bison struck his now-fiancée “head-on and she was airborne.”
“I think she did one or two backflips in the air, and I was screaming and yelling trying to distract him. She landed pretty hard on her back.”
Harris was stretchered out of the field and transferred to a helicopter where she was airlifted to Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center.
“I sustained 7 spine fractures, bilateral collapsed lungs and bruising all over. Glory to God all my vital organs look good,” Harris writes.
She described how Whitehill had planned “a beautiful marriage proposal this week on a natural bridge,” but since she isn’t getting out of the hospital anytime soon, he decided to propose in the hospital.
“My love got down on one knee beside my hospital bed last night and formally asked me to be his wife,” she writes. “Without any hesitation I said yes!”
While those initial proposal plans may have been derailed, this couple still got their happy ending together.
“God is faithful and merciful and I know He protected me in the attack,” Harris said.
This is the first time in 2023 that a bison has gored someone at Yellowstone, according to the NPS.
The last reported goring incident at the park happened on June 28, 2022, when a man stepped into the path of a bison to prevent a child from being attacked. Less than a month before that incident, a woman was gored and thrown 10 feet in the air by a bison.
Yellowstone is home to just under 6,000 bison, according to a count conducted by the National Park Service in summer 2022. The large herbivores almost went extinct during the 20th century, but have lived continuously on the North American plains since prehistoric times.
Female bison can weigh up to 500 kilograms (1,000 pounds) and males can weigh almost double that.
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