I felt bad for the cows. They knew what fate lay ahead for them — something bad —and made a bid for freedom. No, I don’t eat anything with 4 legs.
I am not sure how, but they actually do know much of the time especially when they get older. We had a huge bull that we sent out to “work” as a stud and he gladly got into the stock trailer with no prompting time after time. When we sold him and he was going to be slaughtered he refused to get into the trailer. My uncle who was a rodeo guy grabbed him by the horns and tried to pull him up the ramp. The bull backed away from the trailer and took off with my uncle still holding onto his horns.
They made a couple laps around the field with my uncle still holding onto his horns. Until the bull got tired. Then my uncle led him into the trailer with the rope tied to his harness. And that is the last we saw him. He was normally very tame and we would sit on him while he was eating when we were little.
It is sad but it is our way of life. We raise them, we feed them, and we take care of them... then we eat them. At least our cows, steers, and bulls have a better life than some running around green fields and having adventures together.
In the classic political book (one of my all time favorites despite disagreeing with the Left) Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968 by Norman Mailer he actually discerns this.
He describes the horrors of the Chicago slaughterhouses and the all day long slashing work of one shirtless employee in the stifling heat, splashing blood and standing in pools of it.
Then he says outside, far from the place of their doom, the cows seem to sense death somehow, making uneasy sounds and acting reluctant despite no possible evidence.
This ties in with the later blood flying from the heads of protesters later when thousands refused to leave before police were sent in by Mayor Daley to round them up.
A guilty pleasure of mine is re-reading the passages of "the increasingly conservative" Mailer on blacks. He wonders if he feels this anger at them now what are the average Americans feeling in surges about their rioting and looting.
Reviewer: Mailer predicting the volatility of white voters' anger and resentment against African-Americans in response to debates over white guilt, when the author ominously foretells, "...political power of the most frightening sort [to be] obviously waiting for the first demagogue who would smash the obsession and free the white man of his guilt..." Mailer recognized and dryly tells McCarthy's daughter that "we will be fighting for forty years." Mailer laments the behavior, style and habits of some Blacks, reveals doubts about the ultimate effects of race riots in major cities and expresses that Blacks should collectively do a better job of policing the unproductive members of their own community."
One great scene: The cheerful soon to be Dem. candidate Hubert H. Humphrey in his hotel suite heard the rioting sounds and decided to open the window and lean out to look down. Just then a big wave of tear gas went into his face and he choked and gasped for air.