Animals 

I didn’t think too hard about the personality of the meat on my plate, until I bought Organic. The rack of ribs I was tucking into was born the first week of February – it was three months younger than my baby son. The label told me the breed of its parents: ‘Lowland Ewe, crossed with Texel Ram.’ It fed on the beautiful lush grass of Southerndown. I thought about it as I chewed. I thought about it as my baby boy suckled milk from me. Urgent. Like this lamb was at his mother’s teat. Nudging it as my boy nudged me, pinched me. But I still ate the lamb that made the milk that fed my baby.

Later that day, I read a strange news clipping in the Fortean Times: A farmer noticed one of his cows was giving half the milk she should. ‘I’ll catch the bastard stealing,’ he said, heading out the door to keep watch. He watched her for three nights, waiting in the darkness, but each night the farmer fell asleep, his rifle dropping to the floor, and the thief snuck in unseen.

On the fourth night he waited and waited, but nobody came. Nobody, that is, except a snake who glided further towards the cow who did not flinch. The farmer’s eyes, wide as the pales that caught his cow’s milk, watched as the snake wound its body around the cow’s leg, reaching up to the udder, taking the teat in its mouth to drink. The farmer stared, eyes unblinking, breath shallow.

And when the snake finished, the cow turned and licked the snake’s head, tender, like a mother to her newborn. The snake slipped away, disappeared into the undergrowth.

The farmer thought the cow a beast of the Devil, calmly walked forward and shot the cow dead.

I thought of the snake, returning the next day, in search of its mother cow. Hungry. Her milk had turned to blood.

I thought of the ewe, in search of the lamb lying dead on my plate.

I thought of my son drinking from me, the lamb that drank from the ewe, the farmer that drank from his cow, and the snake.

A mother needs her child just as much.

All of us, animals, killing and eating, killing and eating.

Rebecca Parfitt has been published widely. She is the author of one poetry collection, The Days After. In 2021 her short film, Feeding Grief to Animals was Commissioned and produced by the BBC and FfilmCymru Wales. She is also Editor of The Ghastling, a magazine devoted to ghost stories, horror and the strange. She is the Commissioning Editor for Honno press, the UK’s longest running women’s press. She lives and works in the Llynfi Valley, South Wales.