Bison

I'M NEVER GOING on vacation again. Every time I take time off, something happens that needs to be properly addressed in the Kickoff section, and God forbid Ray Frager try to do it. I'm referring, of course, to the attack of the tennis-playing bison. I was sitting at the breakfast table Wednesday morning and right there on the front page of The Sun was a photo of a small herd of bison - I prefer to call them buffalo, but apparently there is some subtle difference - congregating on a tennis court in Pikesville.

When visitors to Yellowstone National Park come looking for the "buffalo," park rangers gently set the tourists straight. "We definitely know what they're talking about," said Cheryl Matthews, a spokeswoman for the park. But, she added, the rangers let the sightseers know that the animal they are seeking is, to be precise, the American bison. Just like the nine animals that made a getaway from a Baltimore County farm Tuesday. Still, as spectators watched police officers corral the woolly beasts on a suburban tennis court, bison was a word that seldom was heard.

A police roundup of wayward American bison might be worthy of headlines from coast-to-coast and video for the networks. But for the officers whose beats include the winding roads and working farms of rural Baltimore County, corralling livestock is more often just another call on another day on the job. From time to time, horses, cows, pigs step off the farm, and police step in. "Loose cattle, loose horse calls. Usually it's one or two stragglers," Capt. Charles Rapp said yesterday, after he and his fellow officers at the county's Franklin precinct received some words of thanks from the county executive and their chief for capturing the bison.

When Bob Anderson saw the footage of balletic bison leaping tennis nets in Pikesville, he rejoiced that the beasts didn't jump the city line. "Thank God it wasn't me," the director of the Baltimore City Bureau of Animal Control said. "They were calling me, saying, `The buffalo are in the city.' I said, `No, no, check the county!' "But it could happen in the city," he said. Indeed, the nine bison that escaped from a Greenspring Valley Road farm Tuesday to trample the Baltimore suburbs are barely worth a batted eyelash, or so it seems when animal control officers and others enumerate the exotic escapees they have encountered of late: A 3 1/2 -foot baby alligator that snapped up a young boy's fishing bait in Prince George's County.

Baltimore County Police Detective Ed Spragg showed up to work yesterday a sudden celebrity with a slightly bruised ego and a new nickname: "Buffalo Bill." The 25-year veteran of the Baltimore County force gained overnight fame Tuesday when he was knocked on his keister by an escaped bison, making the front page of newspapers, national television newscasts and even snagging the No. 4 slot on ESPN's nightly Top 10 list of sports highlights. "I never took a shot like that on duty before," said Spragg, 49, who managed to escape his showdown with the 700-pound animal without injury.

We're used to them looking majestically inert, a prejudice perhaps owed to the buffalo nickel. From the old cowboy song, we know they like to roam. But leap over a tennis net like some giddy Wimbledon champ? Those nine American bison -- often referred to as buffalo -- that bolted Gerald "Buzz" Berg's Baltimore County farm Tuesday are now media stars. Their jail break got Page One coverage in major newspapers and made national TV news. And the comic image stuck in everyone's mind is that one frisky runaway high-hurdling the tennis net. "I didn't know they could do that," says Mary Decker, head veterinarian at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore.

WHEN BALTIMORE County Detective Ed Spragg came into work yesterday morning, his computer had already been set to display the photo - the one in which he's lying on his back on a tennis court with a 700-pound bison looming over him. "Twenty-five years on the force, and this is what I'll be remembered for," he said, unharmed in the encounter but quickly up to his neck in ribbing. Actually, it was nice to see Baltimore make the front pages worldwide for something other than homicides, drugs or other urban ills.

Police dispatched more than a dozen cruisers and one helicopter. They shut down roads, and state highway workers closed a Beltway ramp. All to round up a herd of American bison disrupting rush hour and roaming through the upscale neighborhoods of Baltimore County's Green Spring Valley. Then - with the nine beasts corralled within the fence of a condo complex's tennis court - the real work began. You try coaxing thousands of pounds of agitated animal brawn into a trailer. "Hectic and smelly," said Larry Plimack, a property manager who joined with police to help capture the bison.

The second-ranked Duke men's lacrosse team shut down the Virginia offense and clinched the Atlantic Coast Conference regular-season title after a 17-2 win over the third- ranked Cavaliers yesterday. The host Blue Devils held Virginia (8-2, 2-1) scoreless for nearly 43 minutes and shut down the Cavaliers' scoring duo of John Christmas and Matt Ward. On the offensive side, Matt Danowski (three goals and two assists) pushed his ACC-leading point total to 53 on 28 goals and 25 assists. Zach Greer added four goals and leads the nation with 42. The regular-season title is Duke's third overall, and second under coach Mike Pressler.

Sid Jamieson announced before the season that he would step down after this, his 38th, year as coach at Bucknell. Jamieson has just guided the Bison through perhaps the most exhilarating 72-hour stretch in the history of the program. First, on Saturday, the Bison stunned then-No. 3 Navy in overtime, 8-7. Bucknell erased a 7-4, third-quarter deficit to make the Mids the highest-ranked team the Bison have ever beaten. That catapulted Bucknell into the top 20. Then, on Tuesday, the 18th-ranked Bison gave visiting, No. 4 Maryland all it could handle for three quarters.