n an ordinary green field, in middle England, a cow. You don't know this cow. You see this cow and if you tried hard you could say it is different from that cow, not the same as that, another cow. But you do not recognise it. Tomorrow, this cow will be just a cow.

You might give this cow a number. There is something clipped to her ear (it's the number ABH-99/7B) on a crimped aluminium tag—no, it doesn't hurt. ABH is the name, Arthur Butcher-Harris, farmer. It's a good guess that 99 refers to the year 1999 and you presume that 7B is your cow, Daisy. You call her Daisy. Cow 7B, Daisy to friends.

A woman called Brande once asked why do we notice things? Why do you see this while I see that? Why is something important to me but not to you. Why have you seen this cow, why are you seeing this cow? What cowness deep in you is there which says, see this, feel this, be aware?

Daisy is the cow who raises her head, looks from side to side. You see Daisy (Cow 7B) and wonder if she wonders. Cows are very stupid, big, you would say ugly. They eat grass, chew cud, have bellies, hanging, swinging shit-splashed tits.

Not like you or I, of course, we are not cows, but Daisy there—the other side, deep brown eyes—are you imagining just that little extra light? There must be a hierarchy of intelligence in cattle, mustn't there?

Look at her, shitflanked, shuffling along with the others, rumps and stink, piss-steam. Lumbering Daisy, wondering Daisy.

You go with this. You think Daisy cannot articulate things, but maybe, maybe, she almost understands. Maybe Daisy (7B) has feelings about the bullock who yesterday charged a tractor, jumped a fence, kept running.

For daisy that's it, the bullock is gone; but we know, you know, that the bullock ran on to a motorway, was struck by a petrol tanker, staggered towards the central reservation, where its rich dark legs finally gave way. There was a nasty pile-up, some injuries, no-one dead, the motor-way closed for three hours. (The bullock was humanely killed).

You know, I know, we know, these things, but Daisy only remembers a blue-sky moment which she cannot see again, the great

and glorious leap of the bullock. Until that moment in her short and lumbering life, Daisy did not have the concept jumping. Even

now Daisy cannot think jump or recall the bullock's leap. But Daisy knows that something yesterday was not the same,

that today is not the same, nothing will ever be the same. You know Daisy does not know of yesterday, nor does she know what is

happening now as she lumbers with the others, but today—though there are no todays, only sun and rain and grass—Daisy feels.

She doesn't know she shouldn't feel.

Today, (you allow the idea today, yours, not hers) today, Daisy senses

green, she realises the grass is not like the mud, it stands proud. Daisy distinguishes muds, the softnesses around her hooves,

the crisp spatters on the flanks of the other cows. We have not yet reached the moment when Daisy will think

my flanks, am I a cow, am I painted like them too?

Daisy is wondering, she is wondering. She looks at the fence where the bullock jumped, the field he galloped across like blood.

He is free, he flies. (You know Daisy doesn't think free or fly, or even bullock, but inside her the disturbance is no less real).

Daisy is wondering now. The other animals are closer. She is wondering why now they are walking single-file, why ahead there are loud noises, one at a time, and the floor is red.

© Alex Keegan