“Nobody [thought] it, nobody knew
No one imagined the great cow guru:
Cows are one!
[They] knocked over a tractor and ran for the door.
Six gallons of gas flowed out on the floor:
Run cows, run.”
From the Dana Lyons song, “Cows with guns”
Maybe cows are more intelligent than they
look.
This week a cow in Poland made headlines
with a daring escape. The cow was
being put into a truck bound for the slaughterhouse. To avoid being loaded onto the vehicle, the
cow broke the arm of a farm worker and got away by barging through a
metal fence.
Although the owner tried to recapture the
animal, it escaped by swimming to an island in the middle of a lake. When fire-fighters arrived with a boat, the
cow managed to swim away from them again.
It sounds like a pretty smart animal to me.
Humans can be oddly paradoxical. How did Polish people react to the news of
the cow’s escape? Of course there was a
huge campaign to save the animal. The
farm owner started leaving food on the island for it. A local politician promised to help save it,
saying that the cow was a “hero”. When
someone suggested allowing a hunter to shoot the animal, there were howls
of protest.
But I’ll bet that most of these people eat
beef, and will continue to eat beef.
Poor cows.
It’s a hard life when you are raised as food. I hope that one day, as in the song “Cows
with guns”, a great cow guru will arise and lead her people to freedom.
And yet I will also probably eat a
beef-burger again. But maybe not for a
while.
Vocabulary:
daring – of an action, bold and adventurous
to be bound for – of a vehicle, heading
towards; intending to go to
to barge through something – to push
forcefully through something
paradoxical – seemingly contradictory or
not logically consistent
a howl – a loud cry
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