"I-5 Stockyard"

"I-5 Stockyard: California" (c) 2010 Stu Jenks

    I smelled the ammonia a few miles back. I knew what was coming. I’ve driven by this stockyard a few times now, on my way to San Francisco. This is the first time I’ve stopped.
    Behind me, tractor trailer trucks blow by as I shoot the cattle with my long lens. A white cow notice me and stares. She, like all the thousands of others, stands in her own shit. It’s not the smell that gets me. It’s the borderline cruelty perpetrated on this sentient beings, having them eat shit, breathe shit, and lay in their own shit.
    I don’t think I’ll have a hamburger any time soon.
    I get back into Martha B. and merge back onto the Interstate. The smell lingers for many miles.

Comments

[Heidi]

I was driving up I-5 once. I'd been thinking of eating meat again, then I drove by one of those stockyards. I don't think of eating meat anymore; I only think of those cows and all the antibiotics they must pump into them so they can stay alive in such filth.