Scary, scary

One of my last days in village before going "en vacance" to, Inshallah, Ameriki, Inshallah, I was caught in a little miniature cattle stampede. Little and miniature because it was just me and one cow. But still. Now I was taking a - shall we say "creative"? - path home, mainly because I have yet to make it all the way from the garden to my house by the back channels without getting lost. But every time I am more adept at getting myself un-lost, so at least there is progress. Anyway, there I am on my bike, and its very sandy, which is very hard to ride in, and this cow, with no provocation, just starts chasing me! I figure he must have someplace to go in a hurry, so I take a quick (slow, wobbly, and slidey) turn and continue on, assuming my troubles are over. But when I look behind me (just to make extra-special sure) he's followed me around the corner! So the race is on, with me, panicked, pedaling as fast as I can without risking losing control in the sand - because if I do lose control and fall off, he'll come up and trample all over me, pop both my kidneys and my gallbladder, and then I'll really be goners - and he's chasing behind me, snorting and shaking his great big curly horns. Even at this point I still think maybe I am just extraordinarily unlucky and I just happen to still be on his pre-chosen path of rage, but then I double back around somebody's house (to the great delight of the family on the other side of the low wall) and he's still there so I know that for whatever reason it really is me he's after. So I'm looking around for anything familiar, thinking to myself that if it comes down to it, I can probably pull one of those jump over really tall wall moves that rodeo clowns sometimes do, when they don't just get gored, instead. But it doesn't come down to it and eventually I do know where I am and I turn into out courtyard, leap off my bike, and slam the gate shut. And my host family is curious and I say "there's a great big beast out there trying to kill me," but panic Bambara not construct good and all I really say is "Cow Is!" And their eyes say to me, "sometimes we're not sure how your country got to be so powerful," but all I can think is, "if one cow with crooked horns is that frightening, how scary must it be to be caught in an elephant stampede?"