For This? For This, I Left Wisconsin For Sacramento?

Today's big news in Sacramento:

Rampaging, Pregnant Cow Shot To Death At State Fair

Calf Didn't Survive, Fair's General Manager Says

Read all about it in the Local Sacramento News.

This is so wrong (or right, I'm not sure) in so many ways that I find myself dizzily trying to control my shpilkes that gets a hold of me at times like these. I'll probably miss something wrong with this, but here goes.

Wrong Thing Number 1:

In the words of Frank Zappa, “this doesn't happen here,things like this don't happen here,who could imagine it could happen somewhere like. . .”

This should happen in Wisconsin. This should not happen here.

This should happen in Wisconsin, where I remember weird stuff involving rampaging cows coming up in the nightly news right after the film from a barn fire. I think the most common phrase on the ten o'clock news was “No livestock was damaged.” Here in Sacramento, we're supposed to be about corrupt politicians and bankrupted treasuries. I always thought Wisconsin was the place where the cows run wild. Maybe all those commercials are true. maybe California really is the America's Dairy Land. Please, somebody, tell me it ain't so. I remember, almost twenty years ago, quietly walking across an English cattle pasture,and minding my own business. I felt inexplicably uncomfortable. After checking my shoes for abnormal prairie muffin crumbs, I looked over my shoulder to see a tightly packed crowd of about forty cattle following about ten feet behind, staring at me with their big stupid brown eyes. This gives me that same feeling. The insane cows are following me again.

Wrong Thing Number 2:

I was at the fair on Sunday. Despite the big cash box heist the week before, everything seemed on the up-and-up.

The high point for us was a llama that sweetly nuzzled our faces with a dry nose and surprisingly pleasant breath. Pretty good for a species that usually spits its cud at people.

We went to the birthing area, since no one can resist the lure of newborn piglets and calves. Hatchling chicks aren't bad either. We saw a pregnant cow who was reportedly about two days late as of Sunday. I fear it was she who rampaged this morning.

Rampaging cows and stalked by a field force of Fearless Fosdicks following rifle-jamming veterinarians sounds a lot more entertaining than teenage art contest winners and fried Twinkies(tm) on the midway. Given the proven abilities of Cal Exp Security, I am pleasently surprized a veterinarian or two didn't get shot along with the the cow.

We definitely went to the fair on the wrong day.

Wrong Thing Number 3:

We are supposed to be sad about this tragedy. A cow and a calf had to be killed. Don't mention that if they had performed successfully, playing the role of carnival freaks for the next week or so, with in a month or two their names probably would have been changed to Sir Loin and Scallopini. Don't mention State Fair's famous barbequed tri tip (that's a popular local beef roast for you mid westerners) sandwiches for sale just outside the birthing area. Seriously, these animals are bread and kept a live for our eating pleasure.

(Note to readers – they may have been dairy cows, but it's just more entertaining if they're bread for meat, and not really that much difference.)

Although I spent a few years being a vegetarian, I am not a PETA advocate. I do not think eating meat is an abomination. I view meat as food. I believe that morally enjoying meat requires us to accept that you kill animals to get the stuff. It makes me cringe when I hear parent tell their kids crap like, “pigs give us bacon”. They don't give us jack. We pull the delicious stuff off their dead bones.

I find it to be seriously disorienting to see people who eat meet crying about “how terrible this is”. I imagine having a rampage and getting fatally shot is a better way to go than the slaughterhouse routine. Perhaps I am projecting my feelings on the cows. Let me be more clear...I would rather be shot on a rampage than chained to a post in a feedlot, shocked with an electric prod, and given the slaughterhouse treatment. Maybe it's just an ethnic thing on my part.

I've rambled as much as I want to, so I must now say,

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.