The Blues

The Cow Jumped over the Moon

On October 4, 2010, in Animals, Barrow Pushing, by Rosie

If it had the energy.

Last week, I took Pip and Pop to our city’s agricultural show. In days of yore, the ‘show’ used to be simply that — the central showground devoted to the showing of animals, the basic pavilions (by today’s standard anyway) filled with delights from the hinterlands, the country folk decked out in tweed suits and gum boots as they prodded, poked and preened about the livestock, the fleeces, the animal flesh.

Then it was time for a slice of prize-winning fruit cake with a cup of Tetleys over at the CWA (Country Woman’s Association).

The 2010 show is a mishmash. There’s the presentation of faming life, equipment, technology, traditions, but it’s overrun by a frenzy of showbag stands, carnival games, scream and vomit-producing rides. If you can tolerate the queues and the unpredictable weather, you can stand in a line to enter the ‘Showbag Pavilion’ and purchase a plastic bag of plastic rubbish that will soon be strewn round your house for the (price range of) 5-500 dollars.

The expense associated with taking family to the show is quite unbelievable, but I don’t want this post to turn into a miserly, miserable, BITCH-AT-WORK chat. I’ve got one thing to say and it’s nothing to do with economics or times changing or the plastic issue of 2010.

It has to do with petting exhibits. If I wasn’t being so serious here, I would make an allusion to something rude. You could be sure of it. However, a G-rated ‘petting exhibit’ is sometimes called an ‘animal nursery’ or ‘mobile petting zoo’ in other parts of the world.

You probably know it? A variable sized area filled with animals that are child-friendly. Our city’s show had one operating this year. It was about the size of a very large warehouse and what occurred inside could be considered animal warehousry …

Warning: This may be distressing to animal lovers. I’m not a HUGE animal lover (I like animals) and I was disturbed.

Imagine if you will, this large, enclosed space filled with (perhaps) 500 people. Many were children, most were high on excitement, sugar, enthusiasm, show fever. There’s straw on the floor, about a dozen fenced areas around the warehouse and enough people so that you bump into others and you queue at the door.

There are piglets in a cage with their mum. Cute. There are puppies behind glass, playing. They’re Border Collies and very energetic. Very cute. There are sheep and ducks and goats, most of them within the cage, an obliging staff member allowing small children in to pat and hold the animals. Quite cute. The animals are skittish. The kids more skittish.

Not so cute.

Then, dotted around the warehouse, at intervals of about 20-30 metres, are young calves. Some of their mates/siblings are enclosed in fenced areas and they are the lucky ones, because the baby cows that are flopped on the floor are exposed to the masses. People milling. Adults shoving. Kids running. Toddlers prodding.

And the calves are very, very young. They are floor-bound, their legs strewn beneath them like the most gangliest of creatures, squashed by the throng.

Don’t get me wrong, show goers were NOT deliberately cruel to these exposed calves. It was just that the calves could barely move. They had been placed in thoroughfares so that toddlers (who didn’t know any better) could go up to one of these animals — probably the same age as them — pick up its head (YES, off the straw-floor) look at it, then just flop it down again.

How, you might ask? Why didn’t the calf get up and kick, play, run, be a young cow?

If you could see the eyes of these animals, you’d know that they couldn’t move. Mac, a man of non-drama, asked me quietly ‘is that one breathing, do you think?’. He is the grandson of a farmer, has spent lots of time on the land. I asked him (quietly, again, so the kids couldn’t hear) if they were drugged. They certainly looked it, but we decided that they might be so damned stressed that they were catatonic.

I felt sick.

And still the people shuffled in, the kids ran close to the snout of the animals, the rough ones manhandled and left. If the half dozen calves had the ability to cry, I’m sure they would have done so. I wonder how many other people visiting the macabre exhibit felt the same.

I’m not an animal rights lobbyist. However, I will never visit one of those places again. In retrospect, and having spoken to a couple of people about this, it’s probably right to say that those involved in breeding animals for ‘patting’ and ‘holding’ are not going to be too worried about how the animal’s eyes roll back in its head, or how they cloud over as you pass.

We see plenty of animals in their natural habitat in this country. That’s the only way we’re going to go from now on.