--NYPD officers chasing a 100-pound calf that leaped from a slaughterhouse-bound truck and ran down the street. "Elsie" was later shipped to an upstate farm (reported in Newsweek June 2, 1997)

But most cows on the road to McDonald's or 4th of July Hibachis
get there. They're not bred to fret or problem solve
or weigh moral dilemmas. Eighty-eight million

in pastures and feedlots last year,
more than one cow for every four citizens:
a quarter cow, one leg, one stomach for everyone!

So the next time you're a bump in the line down at General Assistance,
the next time you're watching one-legged Korean or Somalian kids on TV,
the next time your bosses get fantastic vacation packages to Maui

while your raise request is refused with a "...money's just too tight this
year",
the next time your favorite public forest is mangy with logging roads and
clear-cuts,
the next time a guy at your corner table informs you that you're slow and
you're a bitch,

it won't do you any good to have a cow in your corner.
They're not all Emily who can leap tall slaughterhouse gates,
they're not all Elsie slipping from a truck like a green beret,

they're not all Missy Cow Cow wandering the Chumstick Valley for seven
years
until professional killers watch their bullets bounce off her flanks
as she trots away into the mountains.

So, again,
don't have a cow watch your back.
Some may remind us of Moses or Superman,

but most are Value Meals, most take a bolt to their skull,
funnel through factories in pink ribbons;
so protect yourself,

look to yourself to improve your situation,
and stop honoring, stop accepting,
stop voting for hamburger, ribs, and sirloin.