KEY POINTS:
Looking out to my neighbour's 45ha hill paddock I can watch his beef herd - 70 head of cattle, plus calves. They are fat like buffalo and in this intense heat they behave likewise, wallowing in the muddy creek, hauling their massive bodies on to the bank when
I ride past.
These are beef breeders and at dawn, noon, and into night, they eat almost non-stop. Sitting on my back veranda in the evenings, gin-and-tonic to hand, the cows look like they're plugged into this soaring hillside, their distance lending them a seeming immobility. In truth, they are cramming as much ryegrass as possible into their stomachs before they clean the pasture bare.
And unlike their dairy sisters, these pregnant cows still have last year's calves at foot. Like their mothers, they're tagged and branded with the farmer's initials, their role to increase the herd and replace the "dries".
So do they care, these dark-eyed dumb beasts, about their offspring, their value, and the fact they've been spared the wrench of weaning? Not a lot. When a renegade calf happens to stray too far from Mum's side, she's not going to interrupt her meal to go and look for it. Much easier to just lift her head and bellow. As loud as possible, sometimes ending in a desperate screech, quite unlike the moo cows are supposed to make.
Not that I mind waking up to these country noises. Every day I'm grateful that it's sheep, cows, tractors, huntaways barking in the distance, and the quardle-ardle-oodle of magpies I have as background noise, as opposed to cellphones, shrieking ladies-who-lunch, traffic, and emergency sirens. But watching and listening to the cows kept reminding me of something from the city. It took me a while to realise what.
Mall pedestrians, that's what. Families meandering through shopping precincts, all hands occupied with stuffing food in their mouths. Mothers, fat cows all, with guts hanging out and udders swinging alarmingly, bawling at their kids in the most hair-raising manner.
The only difference is the beef cows are black, whereas these appalling examples of human maternal behaviour are predominantly white trash.
This example I recorded at a suburban supermarket (I wrote it down, pretending to amend my shopping list): "For f***'s sake you bloody kids I'm f***'n sick of you and your moaning. Thank f***'n hell it's only two weeks before we kick January in the arse and you're back at school."
The children's crime? They'd asked if they could go for a swim, the temperature being around 30 degrees.
Another time, I surreptitiously followed a group of hideous mothers around the Lower Hutt shopping mall, fascinated at their remarkable resemblance to the cows at home, feeling a bit like an anthropologist. When their kids were left behind, their loving mothers bellowed from the counter of the chainstore coffee shop some 40m away: "Cybelle c'mere, you stupid f***wit, I'll leave you here all night if you don't keep up. Now whaddya want to eat?"
Cybelle, no doubt, has been hearing this sort of thing most of her short life, as she didn't seem nearly as perturbed as I felt.
I can't bear hearing parents talk to their children like this. No wonder teachers have such a tough task trying to convince such children that they're not stupid and they can learn and achieve, when they go home each night to a steady stream of verbal put-downs. No parents are perfect, and I can recall losing my temper with mine on more than one occasion.
But I never yelled at them in public as if they were of no more import than scum in a milk jug. It's impossible to ban such treatment but you have to wonder why these ghastly people have children in the first place. How ironic that to teach pre-schoolers you need a tertiary degree, but there are absolutely no barriers - social or moral - to becoming a parent.
And don't bleat about low incomes and poor opportunities being justification for such behaviour. Most people of my generation were brought up by parents who, in real terms, earned less as married couples with young families than today's social welfare beneficiaries. My parents were super strict, but good nurturers who read us stories, encouraged us to take huge risks and told us we could achieve anything we set our minds to.
Meanwhile, the beef cows carry on chewing cud. When the grass is all gone - soon if there's no rain - they'll get supplementary feeds, just like beneficiaries who troop down to social welfare for emergency funds when they've smoked and boozed their budget away.
There's one consolation though: at least the cows can be eaten.
