The Creatures

I remember my first pregnancy well.  The labour was long and painful. Excruciatingly painful, both physically and emotionally.

I remained relatively quiet during the birth, despite the searing agony. Head down, sweating, mind focused on the matter at hand. Trying to not attract the attention of The Creatures. But all the stress and the hurting dissolved into nothingness as I looked at my little baby boy. I gazed into his big bright eyes and my heart swelled with love and pride. I cleaned him up, touched at how vulnerable he was. I smelt his beautiful new born baby scent as I gave him his first feed. It was the only feed I would ever be allowed to give him.

The Creatures, the terrible creatures, they stole my baby. They stole him and took him away from me. I bellowed and shouted, I threw my head in anger and fear but it was futile. The Creatures had restrained me, locked me in a cell. I never got to see my son again, let alone cuddle him close, watch him grow up. That was my first of four babies I gave birth to. All were male. The Creatures never let me keep a single one.

Rumour had it that The Creatures seized our infants so they could massacre them for their flesh. These despicable beasts enslaved my species so that they could forcibly keep us pregnant and devour our male children. Surrounding the outside of our prison were rows and rows of dirty-white, boxes, each with a single barred window. Some of the inmates told me that these were where our new borns were kept, before they were transported somewhere far away. Far away to some place where The Creatures would slit their throats and hack up their tiny fragile little bodies.

The baby girls were more “lucky” in that their lives were spared, at least for a few years. But in some ways, I always thought that this was a curse rather than a blessing. Like my sons, they were only allowed to feed once. After this, they were also taken away - daughters removed from their mothers. Some were returned back to the prison after they had been weaned. Some were returned more quickly, but their beautiful little noses were fitted with cruel, spiked contraptions which were forced through their septums.  A horrific torture designed to prevent them from getting close enough to their mother’s breasts to suckle. But this wasn’t the worst part about giving birth to a girl. The worst part was knowing that due to their gender, these innocent, precious beings would grow up to suffer the same fate as us women.

The Creatures were monsters, ugly on the inside as well as in physical appearance. They walked around on their hind legs, each foot fitted with a heavy rubber boot which they would use to kick us and herd us into position. Their skin was strange, smooth and mostly hairless, the colour and hue varied greatly between individuals. They smelt sour, a hideous stench that made it impossible for them to approach us unnoticed. Their facial features were small and cruel. Their aura was grey and their presence oozed a dark cloud of fear over the inmates. It was easy to sense that their hearts were cold, devoid of empathy and completely lacking in compassion. Their blood lust could be seen in their icy stares and sickly grins.

But it wasn’t just our babies’ flesh that they wanted from us. The reason our boys were massacred and our girls mutilated? Our milk. These fully grown, adult beings wanted to drink the nourishment that was meant for our offspring, meant for members of our own species. Detained in the noisy, sterile surroundings of a mechanical hell, my breasts would be attached to cold, steel tubes and my milk would be sucked, vacuumed, stolen directly from my body. The bi-daily ritual of pumping of our mammary glands for every last drop of milk left them infected, crusted and bleeding. I would feel sick from the devastating feelings of sadness, hopelessness, discomfort and hatred towards my captors for doing this to me. But also guilt stricken from the overwhelming feeling of relief – without my baby, my breasts were strained, sore, hard and aching. I found myself reluctantly desperate for the two times a day that The Creatures would make me undergo this torturous practice.

For seven years, day in, day out, this was my life.  Anxious, miserable and distressed. Never knowing if we would be beaten, never knowing if something unexpected would occur. Something that would worsen our already wretched existence. And then that something happened.

My milk dried up. This had happened before but never for this long. An actual physical weight had been taken from me, but this respite was short lived. It was replaced by The Creatures confining me, forcing foreign objects into me, trying to impregnate me against my will, just like they did every year. Only this time it didn’t work. My body was tired. Too weak, too lacking in the resources needed for me to create another life. Another life for these Creatures to abuse.

I was always insignificant to The Creatures, but with no milk, I was completely worthless. Some of the other worthless women and I were taken from the prison. Our bodies had given up; we were too worn out, too much of a burden to be considered viable. We were pushed, shoved and jostled into a container attached to a truck. Some of the women were too exhausted, too afraid to climb up the ramp into the fusty, narrow space in front of us. The Creatures persuaded them with electric shocks to their sides. Hot, claustrophobic, thirsty and unsteady on our feet, we were transported to the final stage of our journey.

We were released, single file, into a dirty, dank building. The stench of iron and death was in the air. The feeling of being smothered hit us all as a thick atmosphere of despair hovered low and menacingly. Ahead of us screams started. Then there was the sound of a thick, hollow thunk. Then silence. That haunting, deafening silence. More pushing and more “persuasion” was inflicted upon us before fresh screams started up again.  We weren’t stupid; we knew what was coming next. The floor was splattered in blood – old and new. Dark brown and bright red spots decorated the walls. Helplessly we queued, a sinking feeling in our stomachs. We waited, nauseous and broken, our legs weak. All we had ever wanted was to live, to nurse our children, to experience freedom. But now our unnaturally short time was up. Lurching forward, one at a time, I was eventually next at the gate.

There are an estimated 7.7 million known animal species in existence on this Earth. Of all of these animals, in all of the world, whatever did I do to deserve the misfortune of being born a dairy cow?

References:
Life of the dairy cow (husbandry, calves, milking practices etc):
freefromharm.org/dairyfacts/
www.ciwf.org.uk/farm-animals/c…
www.vegsoc.org/cattle
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dairy_ca…
Transportation:
www.fao.org/docrep/003/x6909e/…
Slaughter:
www.rspca.org.uk/adviceandwelf…
freefromharm.org/animal-cruelt…