the truly dangerous animal to avoid is the hippopotamus
Hippos are indeed serious critters, Andre, very territorial as you know. I'd guess that the vast majority of hippo casualties are the result of intent -- whereas the "deaths caused by deer", I'd guess, are the results of drivers colliding with deer. Hard to imagine Bambi goring a passing cyclist, but one never knows, for these are desperate times in the animals' universe...
(Had to say something about hazards for cyclists, to keep this thread slightly on track.)
I was introduced to hippo-dom ages back when I was teaching in the Luapula Valley in northern Zambia, a big fishing area as you probably know. The hippos' preferred mode of enforcing their territorial jurisdiction was to come up under a fishing canoe, capsize it, and wreak havoc among the poor sods in the water. Occasionally, the hippo would just do the simple/direct thing & bite the boat in half. One day, I was visiting the mission station at Johnston Falls/Mambulima for Sunday afternoon tea'n'cakes beside the big river, and on the lawn, like a post-industrial sculpture, was a LWB Landrover missing its side -- a hippo had come up onto the lawn, taken exception to This Thing, fixed its tusks 2 x 2 below the rocker panel and above the roofline, and just squeezed. Echoes of your truck that got chewed -- frightening power.
Absent from the earlier list of Serious Critters was the moose, also territorial and horny -- you described its behaviour very well in your tale of the Iditarod. The provinces of Atlantic Canada (esp New Brunswick and Newfoundland) and the US state of Maine, have a lot of car/moose collisions, and m/cycle-moose ditto. Often, both moose and driver are killed. Cyclists have to be wary too, especially in forested/marshy areas.
