I was surprised by the Charolais cows coming to see me at the fence, as curious as they were questioning. They scrutinized me until my gaze weakened under the constant intensity of theirs, sometimes marked by bitterness, resentment, suspicion or contempt.
Sometimes a little mischievous, irreverent, even eccentric, they would indulge in mocking the person on the other side of the hedge. In 15 years of wandering the countryside, how many of these friendly but sometimes unsettling companions have I encountered? A life of grazing, with time spent in a barn during the winter before, after a few years, being loaded onto an open-sided truck bound for their final destination while some of their attitudes hinted at their free and wild ancestors.
Didn’t my friends express me their awareness of being prisoners and victims of their domestication with an insistence that betrayed the untimely return of a painful repression?
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