I walk out of our apartment building in the morning. The world smells mildly of cow shit. Then more strongly. Then mildly again. It is a wafting miasma of cow shit. I check the bottom of my shoe, and then scold myself for thinking so locally. I look about. There is nobody around. It is not so early, minutes before 7am, but the campus is oddly empty. Then it hits me -- cow attack!

The South Koreans conducted military exercises yesterday off the island of Yeonpyeong. This is in spite of the warnings from North Korea that such action would be met with 'unpredictable retaliation'. Hoping to take advantage of this, I refrained from predicting an attack by the Stay-puff marshmallow man. What harm could such an attack really cause. My mistake was that this was an implicit prediction, rendering the attack unlikely. I never would have predicted cows.

Cows have short squat legs, making them unsuited for long armed marches or close fighting in rough terrain. But I was thinking that today's Korea is not the Korea of Hawkeye Pierce. It is very much an urban sprawl of crowded streets and and roasted chestnut vendors. As we see exhibited yearly in Pampalona, cows are the ultimate warrior in such crowded streets. I fear the cows have already landed in Seoul. Crossing the DMZ into the south slowly and unnoticed over several months- who pays attention to a strolling cow here or there- I fear they have converged upon Seoul. I fear our capital has already been trampled under hundreds of thousands of cloven hooves.

Their advance through Taejon and then Daegu, and then onto Pusan will be slow. But I despair that it will be very sure. What means have we to fight it. In the last 20 years, the rural areas have been depopulated, all the young people moving to the cities, where they have grown soft. All the cowboys are gone. It is the unpredictable failing of our modern lifestyle. South Korea will not be the only country to fall to the bovine hoards of Kim Jang-Il.

But as soft and chap-less as I am, I will not go without a fight. I am out to buy a barbecue and case of A1 sauce. This must be where everyone else is-- out buying BBQ sauce. God be with us.