Mad Cow

by Dick Bird Fresh milk from the cow! Try a cup! Guaranteed, you never tasted better in your life! How much? No charge, my friend. Just take a drink, do yourself and Millie here a favour. She had to be milked, she was bursting, and what a shame to waste it! Amazing! I never tasted anything like it! It makes the stuff from the dairy taste like cardboard. Youre absolutely right sir. This is how milk used to taste before it got homogenized, deodorized and sanitized. Millie leans her chin on my shoulder and moos. The sweetness of her breath overwhelms the citys fumes of chemical combustion. Ahhhh! Can I get a cup for my wife here? Certainly. Just do me one little favour. Look me in the eye and think where youve seen me before. In a moment he blinks. No sir, cant say that I have. You see how muddled up I was, expecting a stranger to recognize me instead of seeking a face I knew. A pink young face, on a lad of fourteen, thats the face I want to see. I must have ladled twenty cups before the milk was gone. I wiped foam off my beard and shood away thirsty people, then sat on the temple steps with my back to a pillar, gazing up between charred beams.

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This sticky yellow haze, a smouldering reek of garbage, might smother the strangest corner of earth. Yet this alien spot, give or take a few yards, is where I wasted the days of my youth. If only there were something to catch my eye and make me shout Yes! I remember this! I take out the postcard and gaze at it with the same vertigo and indignation as when I found it days ago. I have nothing else to show how I got here, no plane ticket, just a crumpled antique photo. Dating from the 1890s, to judge by the trains. Im still angry about the trains. Twickenham station, scrawls white ink across the base. Twickenham in outer London, near where I grew up. But these steam engines arent British. Theyre antique Yankee engines burning wood not coal. Yankee or Canadian, with bulging smokestacks and cow-catchers instead of piston buffers in front. The photos taken from above, which accounts for my vertigo. The camera-man in an antique airplane or observation balloon of that era. But the pictures a fake. The station depicted is nothing like where I used to catch the fast train up to London. Too many tracks, ten or a dozen sets of rails. Four of them occupied by standing trains. Engines belching clouds of smoke. Another feature that doesnt belong is the cow running alongside the railway. Twickenham is an urban borough on the edge of Greater London. The last place youd expect to find a cow. A normal cow that is, in her right mind. How did I get into this? Easy, as we used to say, as falling off a log. Simply staring at the postcard, getting angry, when I knew I shouldnt look too close, shouldnt get involved. But the trickery made me want to find the flaw. Then I couldnt stop it sucking me in through my stomach. I was falling into clouds of smoke. Held my breath

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and shut my eyes. Opened them just in time to skim the tops of engines and the platform roof and hit the ground in running shoes crunching gravel behind the running cow. She must be desperate or crazy, swerving over the level crossing comprising as Ive said, a dozen tracks. A cow in her right mind wont cross rails. Canadian cows are kept home on the range by cattle-guards, rails laid over a pit in the road, so vehicles may bump across where cattle fear to tread. Its against her instincts to cross steel rails, even if theres a winning post, a prize such as safety or freedom on the far side. Men and boys run after her, shaking sticks and throwing stones. Yelling stop, turn round, come back, though the noise could only drive her forward. But of course theyre townsmen, without the least idea how to handle cows. Stand back you men, I command in a back-country voice, what youd expect to hear through the steam off a fresh-turned pile of manure. Let me deal with this. I was a cowboy overseas in Canada. They slow and falter by the wayside, impressed by my accent and exotic clothes. Though if this is the Twickenham I knew, then I lived here before most of them were born. Shes an Ayrshire with handsome upcurved horns, wild rolling eyes cast back at her pursuers, froth on her lips, shit on her tail, a heavy udder slung between her legs. A dairy cow. Whats a dairy cow from Englands or Scotlands pleasant pastures seeking in the bricks-and-mortar wastes of greater London? A glance back shows the engines are nothing antique. They are diesel engines, hauling freight cars, closed boxcars emitting a massed moan of mooing cattle. The organic smoke that chokes the sky is off some burning rubbish.

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The crossing gates are up to let vehicles pass, but a white gloved hand is also raised, a police hand stopping everything but the cow. A lady in tight black skirt and flat-top checkered cap instead of the usual silly helmet. On the far side of the tracks, where the heart of downtown ought to be throbbing if this is the Twickenham I knew, the cow stumbles, sways and almost falls on top of her. Is this your cow? she shouts, incensed, dodging out of the way. No she isnt, but Im trying to take her in charge, I explain with my next to last breath. We cant let her run wild in the streets, she admonishes, pulling her skirt down over her knees while running at my heels. Thats why Im trying to catch her. If you cant control her shell have to be destroyed, she croaks. If I had a gun like they do in America, Id shoot er here and now. But as things are I only have my baton. She has it out of her belt held up in front of her nose like a relay runner. I stop for breath with my hands on my knees. Dont hit her with that. It will just make her mad. She looks mad enough already, puffs the copper-lady. You sure shes not one of them mad cows on the news? One of them whats making people sick? I cant answer. My vertigo from the aerial landing and indignation at the bogus trains have congealed into a choking plug of loathing: of contagious disease, of misguided public reaction, of televised pictures of burning cows, feet stuck up through swirling smoke, which is what I now smell stinking up the air.

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Her ears are metal-tagged with numbers. On her brown and white flank I picture a yellow Star of David. Thats it shes jumped off a train taking her with a thousand sisters to the ovens of the local Auschwitz. The lady having left her post, traffic roars across the tracks. The cow in front and we behind stumble among the reeking honking vehicles. Youll have to get a rope on er. Lassoo er horns. Dangerous. Shell drag you, unless you belay round a post. Im glad its your responsibility not mine. Havent you got a rope? Im looking at all the gear on her belt, truncheon holder, torch and radio, handcuffs... No I havent. Theres a hardware store just round the corner. If theyre closed, youll have to improvise... Choked up already, she drops behind. Im plodding behind the cow on the white line. Traffic keeps to the left, which seems authentic. Nothing else looks convincing. It isnt North America, though still far from what I remember as English. Even the insults the drivers are yelling. Asshole! Pisshead! Surely the language cant have sunk so low. Hardware store, she said. Thats American diction. In the England I left they still said ironmonger. I recall the Twickenham of that time. Dirty big red double-decker buses, top deck fogged with tobacco smoke, young bloods swinging on the platform, leaping on and off before the clippie got their fares. I never saw the hardware store. Keeping an eye on the cow up ahead I glance around me for a rope. Or a leash. If I got the chance Id grab one off the dogs being walked beside the road. Pampered pooches peeing on trees in protective cages, lifting one dainty leg, stretching the leash to trip me up. No wonder the baby birches are stunted. Their trampled soil is poisoned with dog-pee and rejected cigarette butts.

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Im running too hard for more than a quick glance around. If this is Twickenham I should know my way. But the silly cow wont run a straight line. She keeps wobbling out of sight around a corner. With no familiar landmarks all these corners look the same. I must find a rope. My chance appears when she stops, out of breath, and sweeps her tongue across the ground. Slim hope of grass amid the cigarette packs and flaccid condoms littering this muddy verge. I seize long whippy twigs off the weeping birches. Im plaiting them into a rope when she looks back, rolls her eyes as if she guesses what Im about, and dashes off down the middle of the road. This time she doesnt get far. Poor beast, she never caught her second wind. She would have to be in rotten shape to let an old bugger like me catch up. Juddering, heaving, too far gone to mind or even feel the plaited birch twigs on her neck. Equally exhausted, I lean into her flank. She gives me this deep wet look from eyes that are pools of drained emotions. Oh, shes not just any old cow. None of them are, once you get to know them. Shes suffering, haunted. Shes escaped. She needs my help. She needs a name. Millie, you and I both need a drink. Where can a cow get a drink around here? The rivers somewhere, but damned if I know where. Its not Hampton where every road leads down to the river. Hampton where I lived is a couple of miles away. A suburb with no cinemas, just pubs, so while I was still too young for beer I took the bus to Twickenham for the pictures: sorry, movies: I speak Canadian, dont I? At least, I have for the past fifty years. Something I said or the way I said it persuades her to lower her horns and sway after me in a numbskull hoof-skidding slide down the sloping pavement.

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As a kid the smell of stale beer made me puke but now, blown out the fan of the Bricklayers Arms, it smells like a sweaty old pal. A working mans pub. Good, Im not in the mood for gentility. Spilled ale smells sweeter than the air of the street, reeking of burning flesh like a witch-hunt, the autos da fe of the inquisition, or the tannery stinking up the fog from down the river. Well, one of us can get a drink here anyhow. About eight guys are propping up the bar. A couple of dogs at their feet, each with his nose in his own dish of beer. Dogs have got it made in this country. Any dog from the outside world would think hed died and gone to heaven. Free veterinary care, free beer for dogs while cows, who work their hoofs to the bone to keep us in butter and milk and cheese and beef.... what do they get? Exterminated, cremated, vaporized. Whatll you have? In my pocket theres some coins as foreign as any Ive ever seen: nothing like the big old pennies, threepenny bits and tanners, shillings, two bob pieces and half crowns I used to clutch in my sticky hand: now Britains decimal, almost metric, on the verge of European, but they might be worth something. Give us a pint of mild and bitter. Not much call for that these days. Well try for the sake of the old days. When I spread the coins on the bar he doesnt blink. Over here on holiday are you? Vacation, I mean. Bloody hell, he takes me for a Yank. Holiday? I dont know... Investment business maybe? suggests the cap with protruding ears and nose dripping on my shoulder.

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Could be. Im not at liberty to say. Oh, something of a confidential nature. You can taste the gossipy appetite drooling. I feel the old dread, of the trapdoor closing. I got out of this country just in time. These are the boys who didnt. The same age Id be if Id stayed but theyre so much older. Pot-bellies full of undigested lumps... theyve written off their lives to suffering boredom. Not even suffering really but savouring, enjoying it. I thump down the glass. Well, that was great, lets have another. Oh, and a couple of pints in a dish for my dog. A couple? Dyou mean a half? Wheres your dog, outside? Now the interests up: not in a passing stranger: in his dog. Tied up outside? Cruel shame, twitches the verdict in their eyes. Bring him in. We serve dogs right? but only the ones we can see. Not him its a her. And she cant come in. Shes too big to get through the door. They grin through the mirrored bottles behind the bar. Well this has got to be some show. Youve whet our appetite, friend. You cant back down. Either bring the bitch in or we go out and see. Fair enough. Now pour two pints for my furry friend. Bowl or dish? Have you got a big bowl... for instance a pisspot? Well, it just so happens, the grinning host reaches under the bar -that my granddad left me this. He fetches up a fine old piece of bedside crockery that would hold eight pints from the Bricklayers Arms, passed out between the bricklayers legs.

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If thisll stretch to it, I venture, pushing coins on the bar, could you fill her up? Four or five pints or whatever shell hold? Shes thirstier than a busload of rugger fans. I say this because theres a famous rugby stadium here, if this is Twickenham as the postcard claims. Ah, come on now stop taking the piss... The dogs start yapping and scratching at their masters feet. The publican separates four big coins. There, that covers it. He fills three pints at the pumps and pours them with an appetizing gurgle. Foam rises to the brim. Right then, lets see this dog. First, you gentlemen give me a hand with this chamber-pot. It takes two pairs of hands to steady it on the floor, spilling only a drop for the eager dogs. Now I see better, with the help of this fine draught, Im thinking she might just squeeze through the door. I make it to the doorway without staggering, and whistle: Millie, come ere. For the benefit of the guys inside, because shes tied to a parking meter. Her huge brown eyes are thirsty and sad. She doesnt hold back when I untie the knot and tow her inside. The place erupts in yells and jeers and chairs and tables shoved aside and yelping trampled dogs. By now inured to urban noise, Millie lurches straight for the crock. She dips her nose in foam to her bulging eyes. She waggles her metal tagged ears. In reverence, or exhaustion, she sprawls to her knees. Shes drunk the lot, squeals a girl on a chair, which she mounted to see better. Sucked it up so fast how could she taste it? Give er another one, brags her boyfriend, flushing with pride. On me. The host lifts the hatch and comes around with two more pints of mild and one of bitter. Some of the guys are checking their watches and making bets on how fast she can

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put it away. Millie stays on her knees with her nose in the pisspot. As the ale pours in froth comes up to her eyes and sticks to her lashes. The slurping noises start up. With a genial smile the publican says, If she finishes that and wants any more its on the house. She looks at him and lifts her tail and squirts a dollop of shit on the floor. Thats on the house too, I cant help guffawing in bad taste. But the mood changed to disapproval and we had to leave. The sun, if it could be seen through cloud, would be going down for evening. Cloud lies heavy over town, a dirty yellow blanket you can smell. Not a cloud from heaven, cirrus or cumulus. This seeps up from the ground to stick like grease on a kitchen ceiling, too high to reach and scrub it off, still low enough to smell. Millie, amazingly, can walk. Can walk in fact, a straighter line than me. Ive been away so long, I cant handle the local brew. While she, it seems by merely living here, is immune to it. Its a clich that night falls swiftly in the tropics. But it couldnt fall there any faster than here. As soon as the sun sinks into fog its smothered. I was already lost when I entered the pub. I come out not only lost but blind. Every streetlight and window wears a ghostly shroud. Nothing I see, not a street nor a building nor a spectral passing face looks remotely familiar. The only face that smiles for me is Millies, swaying on her plaited birch twig rope. I cant even find the High Street with the cinemas. Only video rentals and fast food outlets, drug and convenience stores like in North America. We traipse through narrow crooked streets past empty cars parked under block-long fenced four-storey condos. Gated courtyards signposted, parking for residents only, no soliciting, no dogs.

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How specific their hostility, naming dogs. Could be worse, they might have specified cows. Windows dark, no sound. Is everyone asleep? Saving electricity, a man with his key at the ready explains. The high cost of electric power. Even the air smells worse than I remember, more like burning flesh than innocent sulphurous smoke. Fireplaces are a thing of the past. So how do you heat the house? We dont. If Im cold I go for a run, take the dog for a walk or the cow he smiles to bring me in from the eccentric cold to the communal warmth or put a sweater on and cuddle the wife in bed. When I was a kid wed go to the pictures. Dad went to the pub to play darts and Mum popped into the next-door neighbour for a nice cup of tea and an aspirin. Those days are long gone. I cant afford the pubs but Saturdays, the cinemasve turned into bingo halls, people watch videos at home. No one hangs out on the street, theyre scared of being mugged or worse, mistaken for a mugger. The streets belong to thugs and their victims. Everyone whos got a home stays in, behind locked doors. Well, Im going in, good night. The zoo, by the way, is at Chessington, thats 20 miles from here. Well take the train, I mutter as he carefully latches the gate. Weve come to a park that doesnt figure on my mental map of Twickenham. Were about to tread on the grass when a sign warns us to keep off it. Keeping tamely to the path were further notified that dogs must be kept on a lead. Millie snatches at paper and condoms and cigarette butts littering the grass. Shes drunk but famished. She needs my help. Helped out of her role as a fugitive. Promoted, disguised as one of a privileged class like dogs. Shes on a lead, she keeps to the path,

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but she still couldnt pass for a dog. She doesnt lift a leg to pee or even squat like a bitch but simply stands or keeps on walking unaware that her rear ends sprung a leak. Her muzzle sweeps the ground in search of food. She has to eat to keep the dairy going. As for me, I dont get hungry. Never do, when theres work to be done. Only when back on an even keel, done with dodging dangers, running rapids, can I take time out for a bite to eat and a place to sleep. Taking roundabout paths to the middle of the park, we found the temple. It teased me like a mirage, emerging solid from the mist. Red and green dragon-headed columns snake upward from a circular tiled floor. A virtual ruin, no walls standing, and in the centre, no roof. Clouds aglow with fire between charred beams. It looks as if its been falling down a thousand years. Lush grass is growing in the centre. Millie lowers her head and swings her tail. Louder than the urban hum she grinds her jaws. Theres no one around to answer my questions. How come I never heard of this place when I lived here? Theres a plaque on a plinth. The words are so worn I trace them with fingers: erected1964, by the honourable philanthropist and exemplary business leader, Blah Blah, mayor of this borough, as a gift to his faithful lady wife, Eleanor... nine years after I left. And already a ruin? Or purpose-built as a ruin, a rich mans folly? Rip van Winkle must have felt like this, returning home after centuries sleep. Millie nuzzles over flagstones, jaws chomping juicy grass, real succulent pasture, ryegrass, seed filling out, nutritious. Better than cigarette ends and spent condoms. To put some muscle and fat on her bones. This is where Ill settle down tonight, smelling crushed grass under me, resting on a dragons tail, looking up at stars through mist. The

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layer of cloud keeps the city warm. Ive slept out worse nights than this, in Canada. These faint stars are the ones you see in Vancouver, the same fuzzy wanderers in space. The latitudes right, fifty north, and the air, cool gray and drizzly. Its the same mild hopeless winter that I left. Except this smell. Like bad cooking. Like forgotten burnt meat, fallen under the fridge. Or a dead rat in a trap behind a couch, which you dont remember having set. The hum of traffic is swallowed in the chomp of Millies jaws. Regular grinding, steady as breath. A rhythmic throb more ancient than London, older than cattle herding or hunting, older than our human tribes. The thunder of hoofs over prairies when we ventured out from the trees. Bringing our hunger and ambition. Our aggravation. How much aggravation will madden a cow? Her placid eyes reflect waves of grass. If they were rolling white when I chased her, was it a sign of madness or terror in the smoke of mass destruction? Our words and deeds show what we really are. Silence reveals her for what she is, grazing contentedly or rolling her eyes to the whites when she runs. I have to find some way to help. Help her out of her class as a fugitive marked for destruction. I cant change her looks. She looks like a cow. But as long as she hangs her head to the ground people are going to think the worst. If she could show some pride, hold her head high like a free agent, even a pet, domestic dog instead of a runaway slave.... The clouds behind the lights are glowering purple. Its late, though what oclock Ive no idea, having lost all track of mechanical time. Millie shudders, exhausted. I can hardly drag one foot after the other. Under the ruined temple roof, against a serpent pillar, we collapse. She goes down sprawling on her back, four legs akimbo. Ive worked with cows on and off all my life, but never seen one lie on her back. Perhaps

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Ive never seen one so far gone. Even after a cattle drive, stampeding, rolling their eyes in panic, theyll stand bunched together, leaning on one another, planting their feet in the earth, breathing harshly, jaws slobbering, ribs shuddering. When they lie down in the dark of night in a safe pasture they first tuck their feet neatly under and contemplate some internal vision, memory or dream, ruminating the swallowed grass burped up for a second or third chewing. Its only rare to see, if I stayed out late, cows resting their chins on their folded forelegs and finally shutting their eyes. Never have I seen one sprawl with legs akimbo, resting horns against a temple pillar. I close my eyes and hear the gurgling process in Millies vast insides, converting fagends and shitstained newsprint into useful milk, bone and beef on the hoof. My face against her udder swelling hot. She belches like a brewery hooter blowing for shift change and licks my face with a tongue like hot wet flannel. Her sides are heaving, warm and soft. I snuggle up to her as if shes a sofa. My breathing slows to the rise and fall of her ribs. The rumbling of our empty stomachs harmonize. As our bio-rhythms merge, my view of bare tree branches against streetlights and glimmer of solitary windows grows blurred, finally blots out. A conflict of smells awakes me. Alien fumes waft up my nose. Besides the usual industrial smog something older, yeasty eructations of breweries, tanneries and the slime off the mud-flats as the wind blows up the Thames and the tide goes out. And something else. An acrid, vinegar smell. A smell with a message. Ive received it before. I know what it means. Distinct from the sweat off Millies skin, eruptions of gut-gas from her mouth and rectum, this bears the unforgettable taste of a vagina.

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My right hand creeps across her udder. I still cant reach, till I shift my weight, lean across her udder and find her vulva slack and open, steaming hot and wet. So shes on heat. This explains her frantic running from the train. Not just running away from death but seeking sexual satisfaction. A rare achievement in a cows life. I doubt if theres one cow in the western world who ever finds it. Kept in herds of females, away from even the smell of a bull, in the monthly grip of estrus what can they do but dream? Not even a memory to stir them, nothing but nightmare hormonal yearning. And when estrus is over and conception takes place beginning the ten-month pregnancy, its triggered by no sexual contact as we know it, only the insertion of a latex-covered human arm, and the spilling of a dosage from a test-tube. Poor Millie! What a life! Reflecting lights on the wet globes of her eyes, her hairy ear flaps open, her breathing slow and even. Is she awake? Is a cow ever truly awake in the way we humans are? Or do they dream their lives away as they chew their cud? Deep inside her vaginas gaping lips I feel her clitoris. Huge and standing stiff like a horn, slippery with warm slime. She shudders as I pinch it and caress it. Ive been trained domesticated by a proud, discerning feminist so I know the routine. I time my caresses to her deep shudders, culminating in a sucked indrawn breath released unwillingly gasp after grudging gasp with the resonance of a satisfied groan. But satisfaction only partial, soon replaced by the demand for more. Her body shifts and settles comfortably. Im forced to adjust myself on top of her, reaching my arm to its length across her udder. Her udder distending, teats sticking up, each with a milk-drop on its tip.

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Now my eyes perceive the scene through darkness. Grass littered with discarded human detritus, shining with dew. Spindly naked trees like bony fingers reaching for air. The temple pillars seem to be leaning, falling through the ugly purple clouds. My hand pauses, letting her rest. Her head shakes the pillar, she waggles her ears. Hot breath floods over me, what a blend of rotting grass stems, cigarettes and beer! If she could speak, shed be demanding more. Slowly, as if reluctantly, my hand resumes the movement she desires. Im putting off her climax as long as I can out of fear for my safety. Even the volcanic eruption of a fragile woman can toss a grown man off the bed, followed by a storm that clutches him hard enough to crack his ribs, dragging him down into female depths. So what might happen to me if I brought Millie close to a ton of living beef to this pitch? But the storm has already gathered, and it breaks before I can stop my action, and now I find I cant extract my arm. My arm is trapped inside her up to the elbow. The slimy walls of her womb heave against my skin. On closed eyes I see the hot pink tissue, turgid, convulsing, turning itself inside out. A fine sweet spray of milk bathes my eyelids. I sink my weight against her ribs alternately rigid and soft. After the last upheaval subsides she lies limp as her breathing settles. I manage to pull out my hand, limp and bruised, dangling half-dead off my wrist. I venture a look at her face. Her eyes are filled with wet reflections, glowing full on me. Surrounded by bent buildings, my face glows dimly in the centre of her orbs. One fore-leg folds at the middle joint, what we in our arrogance term the knee and falls heavily over my chest.

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The remainder of the night, before rising at dawn to milk her and eventually peddle her milk by the cup to people venturing into the park either its Sunday or theyre unemployed I watch the waking space of darkness held against her helpless as a child. Im jarred awake by mooing. Gray streaks the clouds. Her udders full, so I search the trash and find a cardboard fried chicken bucket and milk her. Enjoy the drink, thinking how little we know about Mad Cow disease, how it may incubate 25 years in the human brain that was probably rotting already. Footsteps on pavement, passersby. A road I didnt see last night. Maybe the High Street Ive been seeking. Curving away to a roundabout. The diesel roar, diesel smell of buses loaded, nose to tail, familiar though up to date, more curvaceous than they used to be, less angular and edgy. Standing passengers, crushed and swaying, trapped. Faces bleared through steamy glass, still half asleep, half hoping theyre dreaming, putting off the waking up to one more day on the load they lug to weekend, annual holiday, redundancy, the void. I carry the milk to the bus stop. From each mouth that drinks a cup I want the answer: is this Twickenham? How can it have changed so much while Im still the kid who left? And with less hope of an answer: who is Millie and for what is she condemned? Their voices blunder lame and limp. No one can really answer me because they dont understand my question. Of course its Twickenham! Where else? I sailed away when I was twenty, and even then I hadnt seen this place for years. Id lived in the West, in Wiltshire and Devon, learning to be a farmer. That was nice

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country. If I ever move back, thats where Ill live. Not London. This place Id rather forget. In fact, I had forgotten till that postcard fell into my hand. Entitled Twickenham but looks nothing like it, neither what I remember nor this. False pretences. People, animals, roads and buildings pretending to be what theyre not... I have to expose them. Thats my madness. So of course its Twickenham! Where else? though muttered from every mouth is not what I want to hear. As the milk goes down theres fewer chances to hear the truth. When the bucket is empty and I still havent learned, Ill face another day of questing through these streets for a face or a voice or a building or corner or just a perishing tree Ive seen before. The ones I remember are pink-faced lads of 14. Jackie Wheeler, last seen from a bus, swinging round a lamppost while his mother, embarrassed, looks away. He must be bent and crooked now, hideous with age. In hospital or nursing home, wide eyed in agony and fear. I want to see him swinging around a lamppost. A scrappy hundredweight and four and a half feet tall. In shorts, with crooked socks around his ankles. Millie follows me to the bus stop. No leash, she probably ate that during the night. She follows treading on my heels, breathing hotly down my neck. Those big eyes are not going to let me out their sight. Now Ive aroused her motherly feelings and milked her, Im her calf. Well, so Im cherished by someone: a cow who if shes mad its just for being stuck in the same old rut, the same pasture all her life, which I escaped.