The Cellar Image of the Day

xoxoxoBruce Friday Feb 7 12:39 AM

Feb 7th, 2020, Real Buffalo Soldiers

In our wild western frontier days the black Cavalry Troops were called Buffalo Soldiers. The reason was their dark curly hair
reminded folks of the shaggy dark hair on the forequarters of the Buffalo. But they weren’t Buffalo they were Bison.
I guess it's splitting hairs to say they were Cavalry not soldiers.

Brazil has the real Buffalo solders. Well they are actually Buffalo Police. But they are real Buffalo and Brazilian Military Police are
soldiers, however similar as they do murder people like our police.

Oh shit, it's the cops, walk. They're badass, no helmet, no hands on the handlebars.

Quote:

MARAJÓ ISLAND, Brazil — Legends flourish about how the first Asian water buffaloes made it to this colossal island in the Amazon River Delta.
One tale holds that they originally came from the steamy rice fields of French Indochina, but washed up here after the wreck of a ship bound for French Guiana. Another yarn contends that inmates escaping from a penal colony in French Guiana used the adroitly swimming buffaloes to help guide their makeshift barges all the way to freedom in Marajó’s mangroves.
However they arrived, the invasive species multiplied on Marajó, and now numbers about 450,000 on an island the size of Switzerland. So much of daily life here revolves around the water buffaloes that islanders haul garbage with them, race them during festivals and regularly savor fillets of buffalo steak smothered in cheese made from, yes, buffalo milk.
“The importance of the buffalo in Marajó got us thinking,” said Maj. Francisco Nóbrega, 41, an official with the 8th Battalion of the military police of Pará, the vast state in Brazil’s Amazon that encompasses Marajó. “Why not patrol on buffalo as well?”

This kind of freaks me out because as many times as I see this type map, it's firmly planted in my head the Amazon dumps out
below the big coastal bump down closer Uruguay.

Quote:

The buffalo unit started in the 1990s, patrolling the sleepy outpost of Soure, which has about 23,000 people, and breaking up the occasional bar fight. Over the years, the mission has expanded to include pursuing suspects who flee into Marajó’s wilds and cracking down on buffalo rustling on the island’s far-reaching ranches.
“Water buffaloes are remarkable swimmers, better than dogs, and more agile than horses when it comes to moving through mud,” said José Ribamar Marques, an official on Marajó with Embrapa, the pioneering Brazilian research company that focuses on tropical ranching and agriculture. “The animal is also docile, facilitating its contact with human beings.

Quote:

Despite its laid-back vibe, this island is no stranger to the ire produced by such episodes. After a police officer fatally shot a man in 2011 in São Sebastião da Boa Vista, a town on Marajó, furious residents freed the prisoners in the local jail, burned the police station to the ground and sent police officers fleeing to other parts of the island.
In the town of Soure, where the 8th Battalion operates from a small station adjacent to a corral with about 10 buffaloes, police officers claim that patrolling on the animals can assuage tension with residents by bringing low-ranking personnel in the military police, commonly called soldiers, into contact with people who use buffaloes for transportation, farming or other work.

The first picture is from Reddit, the other from the NYT article.

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