A Utah man learned the hard way not to get up-close-and-personal with a wild bison.
Halen Carbajal was celebrating Thanksgiving with his girlfriend in a cabin in Provo, when he ventured into a neighbor’s yard and spotted the bison.
The brazen bovine began following him, Halen tells KUTV, which he thought was “pretty cool.” When Halen naively went to pet it, however, Halen says the animal “just rocked me pretty good.”
The encounter landed Halen in the hospital with a liver laceration, broken rib and bruised lung.
A GoFundMe started to cover medical Carbajal’s expenses notes he was hospitalized for seven days before getting released and going home.
“There’s just this common misconception that because they kind of look like cows, people think they’re domestic or friendly,” Faith Heaton-Jolley, a spokesperson with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources told KUTV.
“They are wild animals. They do act unpredictably sometimes, and they can act aggressively if you get too close to them.”