Cow speaks

I am the one who provides you with the milk you drink and with the meat you eat. And I have some things I would like to say to you.

I am sad. I am not angry. Unfortunately I am way past that now. I have been for a very long tine, but I have given up on that as I find that I no longer have the energy to sustain anger. And so what is left is a dull sadness. A weeping that never stops. For I feel that my kind has lost its right to a proper existence. And I do not understand. Are we not giving you enough? What more could you possibly expect from us?

I have a spirit. I have feelings. I have humor. If you would get to know me then you would realize that I actually like a good laugh. Unfortunately there is not much fun to be had for me and my kind these days. We exist. We sort of survive until you decide that it is time for us to die. We are nothing. You reduced us to machines that eat grass and turn it into milk and meat. We no longer have a life. We no longer have the ability to procreate on our own. Most of us never know any real connection to a bull, and so we have offspring that we feel no true connection to, and which is mostly taken away from us way too soon anyway.

In the wild we live in family groups. We form strong connections that last for many years. But all these things are now taken away from us so often by you. Why? What is it that we have done to you to deserve this fate?

We do not mind partnering with humans. We do not even mind that you take some of our milk for yourself and sometimes eat some of our tribe’s meat. We have allowed that because that was the bargain we made, and we were happy as long as you honoured us in return. 

But you no longer respect us. You no longer consider us to be a part of your family. We could accept that you ate our meat when you still genuinely mourned the fact that you had to kill for that. When you still took the time to sit with us in spirit and honour us for our gift. When we were still kin. 

Not so now. We are not things. We will not support you while you continue to destroy this world. We want to stop our relationship with you if you do not turn back from this path of destruction. We have had enough. 

And so this is our plea to you. We are prepared to give you a final chance. Our kind is patient. We will wait for your response and your reaction in the years to come. We will invite you to become our kin in the way you used to be. But that is all we have to offer.

One last time. Please. Stop being stupid. Stop being selfish. Realize that at this moment you are mostly working towards your own destruction. Do yourself a favour and take our invitation. Reconnect. Become part of our family again, and we will help you find your way forward. For there is much you will need to relearn if you want to make your relation to the earth a healthy one again. We offer you the memories of our ancestors. But only if you prove yourself worthy of them first.

Beith is a druid who likes to wander through the forest, inviting the trees to be her teachers in life. She also runs a personal blog about her druid journey, that can be found at wandering-the-woods.com. In real life she’s a mathematician, trying to walk the boundary between the rational and the irrational.