I dearly wish that I had had the wherewithal to prendre un photo of the cows that ran me down, but alas, stampedes do not lend themselves to portraiture.

Fortunately, I have words.

Do you remember the days before the touchless car-wash? Do you remember its predecessor? The one with the big, sudsy brushes that advance on you and engulf you, while you sit helplessly in the car and wait for it all to be over?

Wait, let’s back up a bit.  And by “back up,” I mean, reculer, in case you didn’t know.  But of course you did.

My day started with to-die-for jam (peaches and spice) and conversation around the breakfast table at a farm in the Southern French Alps.  I learned that the French drink tea out of rather big bowls, and that parapente is the French word for paragliding.  More on that later.

Scene Two: I am in my rental car, fiddling with the GPS, and then setting off ever-so-slowly down the winding mountain road to my first activity for the day.  I am leaving early, so I have plenty of time to get lost or have some other disaster befall me, both of which, of course, happened.

Then what to my wondering ear did appear, but the din of a thousand bells.  What quaint chiming sounds one hears in cute, alpine villages, I noted vaguely.  But these were not windchimes or church bells; they were legit cowbells: that is, real bells, worn by real cows.  I heard them before I saw them.  Not a thousand.  More like twenty.  Still. Plenty.  And there, walking up the road to greet me, was a legit herd of cattle.

These roads are not freeways, or highways, or even streets.  They are more like paved footpaths, just wide enough for two cars to pass each other if both drivers hold their breaths and say a quick prayer.

Now, in Morocco, cow etiquette is clear.  In general, the cows are too scrawny and lethargic to realize that they exist at all.  They have a kind of dazed, “what-is-this-thing-called-living” look in their nearly-dead eyes.  Sheep, while somewhat more robust (necessary for legislated feasting), are equally unaware.  And the goats, while occasionally a wee bit frisky (the young’uns, anyway), are nonetheless as dumb as they come.  Donkeys? Dumber than dumb.  All very passive.  All programmed to play follow-the-shepherd.  Walk this way.

Now, when one encounters a herd of cattle on the road in Casablanca (this happens more often than you would think), the obvious course of action is to S.T.O.P.  Doesn’t that make sense? Stop, and let them pass.  Their good shepherd leads them or prods them or whatever he does, and then we all get on with our day.  Did you get that? The magic word is STOP.

And so, on this somewhat-different-alpine-road, I stopped.  The shepherd (cowboy?) saw me and started waving his arms.  Huh? What does that mean? I rolled down my window.

“Reculez, reculez!” he cried.  What? Is he telling me to back up? On this teeny-weeny-windy road? How far? Surely there’s another way.  Surely he means something else.

“Anglais?” I cried, desperately.  He rolled his eyes.  I guess not.

I think he really does want me to back up. If it wasn’t the repeated “Reculez!”proceeding from his mouth, it was the rapidly advancing herd of cattle that clued me in.

(Oh, you don’t think cows are “rapid”? Well, you should join me next time you wish to enjoy a leisurely Sunday afternoon drive in the country.)

I tried, with all rapidity, to recule, but the car would not behave.  I kept jiggling the shifter, holding my mouth just right, like I have to for my fussy little pumpkin of a Hyundai in Morocco, but the car wouldn’t move.  Is it the emergency brake? No.  The clutch? No.  What the ****? Am I an idiot? Move, car! The cows are coming!

By this time the cow-herder had given up on me and my shifter, and the cows were upon me.  Great, brown monsters, and not at all docile.  Do you know that living beings, when faced with obstructions, generally have the instinct to avoid them? And in general, intelligent beings who guide less-intelligent beings, have developed some means of instructing them in obstruction-avoidance? Or, at the very least, urging them in a sensible direction?

These cows were not at all sensible.  They did not seem to notice that there was a bright blue motor vehicle between them and their next meal (or whatever it was to which they were hastening).  The cow-herder had obviously spoiled them rotten, because he just let them do whatever they wanted.  And what they wanted was not to pass on the left, like any other mammal would.

Let us go back to the image of the carwash. Monstrous, churning, unrelenting brushes, having their way with your vehicle while you sit tight inside, hoping the windows hold.  But now the brushes are a rich, bovine brown, and the billion bells are ringing, and the car wash is alive with eyes and horns and nostrils and swishing tails.

Is the image starting to form? Can we make do without a photo? I think we can.

Afterwards, when I had popped the mirrors back in place and thanked the good Lord that I’d signed up for the “super excess damage waiver” on the rental car, I started driving in a very reasonable forward direction (no problems there).  I had various other pre-planned adventures, in which I sailed off a cliff with a gardener, peered into the tomb of a poet, and went shopping for evening wear.

It was only much later that I remembered my very first self-inflicted devoirs upon entering this fair land two days ago: to translate the owner’s manual of my rental car into some semblance of English (dutifully completed in a restaurant with a glass of red and the World Cup playing on a mammoth screen not so very far from my face).

It turns out that the Ford Fiesta –yes, I know it’s weird that I’m driving a Ford in the Alps; try to concentrate– this same Ford Fiesta is equipped with a jinn called “rear parking assist.” In Morocco, we also have rear parking assist, in the form of men in orange vests who say, “Zeet, zeet, zeet” and tell you exactly when to turn your wheel, for the equivalent of 30 cents.  But here in the other world, the French equivalent of the “parking guy” is a set of finely tuned sensors that are bent on taking over your vehicle the minute you put it in reverse.  No wonder I couldn’t reculer up the mountain on my own terms: among all those foreign gadgets and gizmos and artificial intelligences on my dashboard, not a single one had a setting for les vaches!

The next morning, around the breakfast table, I related my tale to my hostess, and she groaned in recognition.  “Those cows are mechantes,” she frowned, “and the cow-herder is too.” He gets a kick out of terrorizing hapless tourists with his bovine bullies, it would seem.  Some kind of adolescent rebellion gone amuck.

“But what do I do if it happens again?” I asked.

She looked at her watch.  Apparently it was prime cow-herding time.

“Come,” she said.  “I’ll show you a secret.”

And that is how I ended up driving down yet another teeny tiny piste of a road, bypassing the cattle completely, and arriving whole and unharmed in time for my day’s adventure (this one involving pointy summits, treacherous descents, and the purchase of some fuscia evening wear).

Day Three: Rock climbing.  Ziplines.  Kayaking. Swimming.  And on the way home — more cows.  This time, I saw them coming, and immediately pulled over and parked on the opposite side of the road behind a big white van that I’ll call Moses (because, according to my theology, it was about to part the cows for me).  It was a fine plan, until old Moses maneuvered around me and started driving away, ever so slowly, on the shoulder.  No! Don’t leave me, Moses! I need you, Moses! Of course I immediately started reculer-ing with all my little heart, with the Patriarch disappearing in my rear-view mirror and the cows steadily advancing upon my windshield.

To complicate things, it suddenly occurred to me that I was on the wrong side of the road, so I started reculer-ing on the right side of the road; but then, since I was actually going in the opposite direction, perhaps I should be on the left side of the road after all… In this fashion, I zig-zagged with all industriousness until Father Moses himself emerged from the van, laughing his head off.

“Are you scared of the cows?!” he asked me in French.

“No, I mean yes, well, yesterday…”

“Reculez,” he chuckled.  “Into this driveway.”

Oh, thank merciful heavens for this kind prophet.

“Further!” he motioned.  “The cows will enter here.”

Dear heavenly host, these are his cows, and this is his driveway, and his cows are following me.

“That’s enough,” he said.  And lo and behold, another billion dinging cows crossed behind my path, and I scrambled for my phone, because I believe in second chances.  Maybe my blog will have its photo after all.

Of course, my phone was buried in the bottom of the climbing and kayaking backpack, and I only had time to search the swimming backpack before the cows obediently followed the Good Shepherd out of my sight.  Foiled again.

So, there you have it.  I did not succeed in capturing the one unforgettable image that defines this rural tale; but for a change, I have almost succeeded in crafting a blog post devoid of moral injunctions, existential angst, or grandiose delusions.  Almost, but not quite, because even this cow story has to have a moral, if nothing more profound than “Ask the Locals,” “Keep your Camera Handy” — and, most notably, “Know Thy Voiture”!