On a Sunday in South Africa’s Limpopo Province, the most predictable thing in the world happened. A Cape buffalo, faced with a predator trying to kill it, successfully defended itself.

The headlines called it a “tragic accident” and an “unprovoked attack.” But there’s nothing unprovoked about defending against someone who traveled 8,000 miles specifically to kill.

The Setup

Picture this: A Texas flamboyant Bible and bullets man, pockets stuffed with dollars, jets off to kill one of the world’s most beautiful animals. He layers himself with insulation, the proof of what he believes is his fabricated dominion over all creatures.

The buffalo brings evolution: heft, speed, and a pure uncompromising will to live.

Guess which one prevailed?

The Great Equalizer

For all the talk of God’s image, superior intellect and technology, we’re still just idiots walking around on a planet where physics doesn’t care about prayers.

The buffalo didn’t know it was supposed to lose so someone could claim a participation trophy. It didn’t get the memo about special human exceptionalism. It just knew this dude was trying to kill it, and responded the way four million years of natural selection taught it to defend against any predator.

No theology. No technology. Just the simple, ancient logic of real survival.

The Humble Truth

There’s something deeply humbling about this story that goes beyond one person’s tragic preventable death.

It’s the reminder that for all our remote firepower, for all our certainty about our place in the natural order, we’re still just animals sharing space with other animals who didn’t agree to be turned into trophies.

The buffalo wasn’t making a statement. It wasn’t insecure and evening some score. It was just an individual creature that wanted to exercise and keep existing, using the only tools it had against someone who wanted to stop that from happening.

And sometimes, reality wins over fantasy.

The Real Tragedy

The tragedy isn’t that a “danger” killed someone. The tragedy is that we’ve built entire industries around the idea that other living beings exist primarily for unsustainable extraction and entertainment, and we’re shocked when they can still decline to participate.

Every year, people pay enormous sums to travel to end lives that were just trying to continue. We call it sport. We call it tradition. We call it connecting with nature. Lumumba and Mondelane called it American assassination. Remember them?

The buffalo calls it daytime.

What the Buffalo Knew

The buffalo knew something we often forget: that life wants to keep living, and it doesn’t matter how much money you have or what you believe about your rightful place in the world. When push comes to shove – literally, in the case of Oceangate too – the universe still operates on very simple principles.

Force meets force. Mass times velocity equals impact. The will to survive doesn’t negotiate.

No amount of faith changes physics. No amount of technology changes the fact that other animals didn’t sign up to be our victims. And sometimes, just sometimes, the universe reminds us that we’re not actually in charge.

The buffalo went back to being a buffalo. The headlines swiveled into calling the defender the attacker, a danger instead of a survivor.

But for one brief moment on a Sunday in Limpopo, the natural world got to be exactly what it’s always been: unimpressed by our assumptions and indifferent to our plans.

And maybe, if we’re able to put down the Bible and be honest, that’s not tragic at all.