What I Saw Inside Last Summer

Living in Central New York, I've seen "livestock" transport trucks on the road more times than I can count, and I always cringe to see them, knowing they contain the battered and spent bodies of still-living animals, on their way to being killed. I cringe, but I always look... dreading what I may see, but needing to know if the trucks are full. A part of me feels that I owe it to these terrified souls to witness their hell, if only for a second's passing... to not turn away, to not protect my happiness or carefree day while they are transported to their death because of the demands of people who I used to be just like. And because I make myself look, I have seen inside those 18-wheelers of death and greed and insanity, and seen many different animals, all worth nothing but a price tag on their head that says something miserable and vile like "$6.99 per pound."




But one day coming home from work on the NY thruway last summer, I went into the left lane to pass one of those trucks on my right. As I was slowly going by, I looked over, compelled to see who was in there, to give some kind of acknowledgment to someone who was hours away from having their life taken from them... someone who just minutes after that would be nothing but a body cut into pieces renamed "steak" and "roast" and "loin".. and just happened to catch the eye of a cow inside, through an oval metal ventilation opening. As I passed, this cow locked eyes with me, and for just a moment-- and for the first time since I'd been looking into the backs of these transport trucks-- I really saw inside. And what I saw in that one visible eye was a mix of two words that I would think would be exclusive of each other, but the only way I can describe her expression: defeat and terror.

I burst into tears and cried the rest of the way home for this soul whose life meant nothing to anyone. I have not forgotten that look, which said so much-- I understood her thoughts-- defeat at what she'd been through, what had been done to her, a spirit broken down from a short life of nothing but abuse... Defeat at being locked in a body with the only life she'd been given, and having us claim that body for our own use-- her body, her freedom, her very life. And terror at all of it... after all she'd endured in the filthy, legalized abuse world of the "animal agriculture" farm, where she'd likely never seen the sun until the day she'd been led onto this truck to be driven to the horrifying house of slaughter where she would be killed... after all she'd lived through in her empty non-life, unseen and hidden from the public who demanded her death, and forever untold, the horrid atrocities she'd endured that she could never tell, now herded in a hot, polluted truck on a scary journey to who knew where.... Defeat and terror, broken down, bullied, used, brutalized, denied all that is natural and good and compassionate, claimed as someone else's without consent and without a say in any of it, and now this injustice on top of all she'd been denied and forced to undergo in her limited time on this earth-- forced into the back of an 18-wheeler for possibly a days-long trip with no food, no water, and, as always, no compassion, and on her way to her death so someone can eat parts of her.




I have been an animal rights proponent for 17 years, but never before had I seen into an animals soul like I feel I did that day, and what I saw crushed me. And I couldn't do a thing about her suffering. The government says she can be used in this manner, and so she was. I thought about what I could do to intervene... follow the truck? Stand in front of the loading bay and refuse to let them take her in to kill her? Plead with the driver to let her go? Offer to pay him money to drive her to Farm Sanctuary to give her one chance at life? Try to drive him gently off the road and cry and beg to see her as a living, feeling being?



I cried as I drove home defeated, knowing I could do none of those things, sobbing out, "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, poor cow, oh my god, I am so sorry," for failing this terrified being who looked at me as I drove by on the outside of all that misery. She looked into my eyes as I drove by and I felt crushingly ashamed for being free and priviledged.... What wonderful thing had I done to be granted such privilege? What horrible thing had she done to be denied it? I felt embarrassed and shamed for being on the outside, as she followed my with that one visible eye, seeing me driving by in comfort in my car. I was helpless to do anything but continue my drive in the luxury of my own freedom. She looked out to me and I did nothing. It was a terrible day for me. Millions times worse for her and her companions in that truck on their nightmare ride.




And the only thing I could hope for, in this insane world of horrid reality we live in, where slavery and murder of others is legal if we like how they taste, regardless of whether they want to live or not, where I can see a terrified living being behind an oval metal window being taken to be killed and not be able to do a thing about it, is that somehow, in some way, she could see in my outburst of tears and grief, that someone cared. At the sad end of her life of slavery and deprivation, with each mile that afternoon bringing her closer to her ordered death after doing none of us any harm, I held in me the pathetic hope that my mourning of her life would be known to her. This paltry extension of my grief was all she had in her time in this world to suggest that she mattered, that she mattered to anyone at all.