The cow that stomped Tokyo

This morning as I left for work I saw a 12-foot-tall cow.

I know it wasn't really 12 feet tall. Cows don't grow that tall around here, and if they did, the barns wouldn't be big enough to hold 'em.

But there's a peculiar optical illusion that occurs when our neighbor's cows wander across the high ridge on the other side of our road: when they reach a particular bare spot with no trees or shrubs to lend a sense of scale, they seem to balloon into monsters tall enough to stomp across Tokyo. It's hard for a cow to look menacing, but when they're 12 feet tall, they look positively primeval and even powerful--until they move closer to the trees and shrink again into ordinary bovines, utterly harmless and eminently ignorable.

For that brief moment, though, when the cows are 12 feet tall, they definitely get my attention.

Added later: One of my students turned in a draft containing the word "cowage," which seems to be a combination of "coward" and "courage." Cowage is what I need when I encounter the Cow That Stomped Tokyo.