Vs moose

It was very nearly the last act of his life. Later he would not know why he started to turn — some smell or sound. A tiny brushing sound. But something caught his ear or nose and he began to turn, and had his head half around, when he saw a brown wall of fur detach itself from the forest to his rear and come down on him like a runaway truck. He just had time to see that it was a moose — he knew them from pictures but did not know, could not guess how large they were — when it hit him. It was a cow and she had no horns, but she took him in the left side of the back with her forehead, took him and threw him out into the water and then came after him to finish the job.
  He had another half-second to fill his lungs with air and she was on him again, using her head to drive him down into the mud of the bottom. Insane, he thought. Just that, the word, insane. Mud filled his eyes, his ears, the horn boss on the moose drove him deeper and deeper into the bottom muck, and suddenly it was over and he felt alone.
  He sputtered to the surface, sucking air and fighting panic, and when he wiped the mud and water out of his eyes and cleared them he saw the cow standing sideways to him, not ten feet away, calmly chewing on a lily pad root. She didn't appear to even see him, or didn't seem to care about him, and Brian turned carefully and began to swim-crawl out of the water.
  As soon as he moved, the hair on her back went up and she charged him again, using her head and front hooves this time, slamming him back and down into the water, on his back this time, and he screamed the air out of his lungs and hammered on her head with his fists and filled his throat with water and she left again.
  Once more he came to the surface. But he was hurt now, hurt inside, hurt in his ribs and he stayed hunched over, pretended to be dead. She was standing again, eating. Brian studied her out of one eye, looking to the bank with the other, wondering how seriously he was injured, wondering if she would let him go this time.
  Insane.
  He started to move, ever so slowly; her head turned and her back hair went up — like the hair on an angry dog — and he stopped, took a slow breath, the hair went down and she ate. Move, hair up, stop, hair down, move, hair up — a half-foot at a time until he was at the edge of the water. He stayed on his hands and knees — indeed, was hurt so he wasn't sure he could walk anyway, and she seemed to accept that and let him crawl, slowly, out of the water and up into the trees and brush.
  When he was behind a tree he stood carefully and took stock. Legs seemed all right, but his ribs were hurt bad — he could only take short breaths and then he had a jabbing pain — and his right shoulder seemed to be wrenched somehow. Also his bow and spear and foolbird were in the water.