Bovine Intervention

A few night ago I was walking in pitch black down the craggy dirt road that leads to the med students’ house, when I was almost gored. I was lost in thought, not really looking at what was coming at me, when suddenly a horn passed six inches from my right breast. I looked up and saw eight bulls walking at me down the middle of the road.

These were the gorey kind of horns, too. Not the Mary Tyler Moore-style horns that Cape Buffalo have, or the purely decorative antelope horns. Ugandan bulls have some kind of Pamplona lineage in them, they sport serious impalers. The horns come out from the head at a forty-five degree angle, then curve gently forward so the sharpened tips are facing dead ahead. It’s a fiercesome look.

And here’s the topper: Taking up the rear of this deadly herd was a boy who could not have been more than seven years old. I’d say he was probably five. But it was pitch black, so hard to say for sure.