Talk About Cliff Hangers

My Friend John from up in Vermilion Bay Ontario Canada sent me an email with the following information and photos:

I was notified by a reader, that the images shown belown are not of Bighorn Sheep on the face of Buffalo Bill Dam in Wyoming. This information seems to be part of an urban legend that has gone around the internet. The photos had been obtained from the original posting Italian web site.

I would like to thank Sandy for bringing this to my attention.

The following information was obtained from About.com

For those who aren't familiar with the view - it's the downstream face of the dam and those dots are wild goats WALKING ACROSS IT. They're licking the surface for the salt and other minerals that are on the masonry.

THE CRITTERS are a species of wild goat known as Alpine ibex (aka Capra or European ibex), not bighorn sheep; the edifice is Cingino Dam (Diga di Cingino), not Buffalo Bill Dam; and the snapshots were taken in the Alps of northern Italy.

According to the website Animal Corner, Alpine ibexes are herbivores and inhabit the steep, rocky terrain of the European Alps between 6,500 and 15,000 feet above sea level. They're quite agile, as one might gather from the photographs, and have a "unique hoof structure" making it possible for them to navigate near-vertical rock faces and, of course, dams.