Waimoku Falls and a Cow!
Last month a whole 30 days ago I took a vacation with my friend to Hawaii. The most eventful part of the trip was being charged by a bull on a hike to Waimoku Falls. Everybody tells you how beautiful the hike is and how fun the bamboo forest and falls are. NOBODY!!! NOBODY warns you that there is a herd of cattle in the middle of the forest. It’s not just any forest, but a national park approved and maintained by the U.S. government.
We start our hike around three in the afternoon. It is a 4.x mile trip with a few hundred feet elevation change through the guava trees, then the Banyan trees, and then the bamboo forest. We were going on a pretty reasonable hiking pace and stopping to see the views of the falls and the pools below the sections of cascading water every 10 minutes of so. Forty-five minutes into the we come to a gated area that says please close gate behind you. Thought bubble in my head goes: Hmmm…. I wonder if there are animals here…. nah… can’t be we’re in a forest.
After another 10 minutes of hiking we grind to a sudden halt. There in front of us is a fully grown bull, complete with horns and not the sawed down kind. We decide that the best plan of action is to not disturb it and walk around it. We start walking quietly under the Banyan tree and suddenly the bull notices us and turns towards us. My friend jumps into the underbrush hoping to avoid him, but instead the bull starts charging towards him. This whole time I am watching and staring about ten feet lower on the path in the middle of an open area. The bull charges my friend not once but twice. I am totally frozen in place and too afraid to move in case I attract the bull’s attention. The bull loses patience with my friend and turns around.
Now the bull is facing me. I can see its beady eyes. You know how in horror movies they show eyes with no pupils? well… bulls just have a solid glassy brown eye that you can see your reflection in. The bull starts to paw at the ground with his front left hoof and I fear that his is preparing to charge me. There is no cover for me to dive into on the left or right. The only cover is in front of me towards the bull. I scream because I’ve realized that the bag for my SLR is red and bulls are supposedly fixated by red things. I quickly take off my bag and throw it away from me and away from the cover without regard to the thousand dollar equipment inside hoping only for my safety.
Distracted by a red flying bag, the bull turns his attention away from me and watched the bag. As soon as the bag lands on the other side of the path, the bull decides that I am no longer a threat. He walks away while I run for cover.
Nobody believes us when we say we were charged by a cow in National Forest. The moral of the story is never walk in the path of a cow. The amazing thing is a family caught up with us later at the falls and said they allowed their child to pet the bull.
In case you don’t believe us, there really are cows in that forest. Another Blog on this topic.
Add comment November 4th, 2006
