Cows are naturally curious creatures. On a quiet summer evening, walk along a meadow in the polder and in no time they will look up from the grass where they graze, to shift their attention to you. With a bit of luck, they’ll saunter over to the fence you lean on with your elbows to study you from a short distance. Often more will follow. Moments later, a crowd of good-natured animals stares at you until it turns out that you have nothing to say, save perhaps a well-meaning moo. It’s as if their curiosity gives way to slight disappointment at your lack of meaningful conversation. They drop off and resume their soothing tear at the blades of grass.
What does the cow think? Is she not only curious, but also melancholic, like singer-songwriter Meindert Talma in Mach mal Pause suggests?
The clouds, the clouds in the sky
The fields, the manor houses
The birds that soar above the trees
and the cows that dream of a past life
Mach mal Pause.
If we nevertheless try to delve into the soul of the cow: how would they like to always be addressed as ‘lady’? Would they find the respect that comes from that word honorable and reassuring? Or do they know deep down that their lives usually end very differently, much faster and more violently than that of ladies of the human species? And does that explain their melancholy look?
The two cows that had to show up for the cattle breeder’s protest in front of the House of Representatives building in The Hague on Tuesday – what were they thinking when they were led from the trailer and ended up in the middle of a rowdy group of self-proclaimed stewards of God’s creation? When their owner called on the minister responsible for nitrogen policy, Christianne van der Wal, to choose which of the two young cattle could go home, and which animal life should end up in the slaughterhouse on Tuesday evening? Would they have thought: that seems like asking for a Solomon’s judgment, but we know better. Because there is no choice, soon we will both be shot in the head.
Would the cows bask in the ephemeral attention of the blond politician in a suit? The one who also reported to a stable in Stroe last week, to declare his solidarity with ‘the farmers’ without specifying who he has in mind. Wilders, who tweeted: ‘It is not nitrogen, but the hatred of this cabinet that is destroying the Netherlands. They want to bully farmers away and new asylum seekers’ centers will soon be built on their land. Madness.’
One bull is said to have muttered to another: ‘The PVV leader often warns that the Dutch are ‘becoming a minority in their own country’. Would he not know that those 17.7 million copies of homo sapiens in the Netherlands were converted into cattle by us, the cattle, with our 4 million cattle, 12 million pigs, and 47 million broilers (figures from 2021, from the CBS, red.) have long since been made a minority in their own country?’
Eyewitnesses to the demonstration in The Hague reported on Twitter that the two cows let the noise and all the attention of the commotion-hungry cameras get over them. They ate hay from a bucket and peed, nature callingwithout shame on the street. Although there are no images of it, after the protest, the two presumably accepted the way home in the trailer they came with and they wait in the stable ruminating, but not carelessly.