27. The Burden of Responsibility

17/11/08

It's been a few days since I wrote. Our routine has changed. We've kept up the phone and radio checks, the perimeter walk and the church bell. The rest of the time we've been up at the farm.

When we walked in that first day, it was absolute horror that we felt. Revulsion. The barn was set up to appeal to children - cartoon character animals and their names around the wall, speech bubbles. Everything cute and colourful. Hay bales were set out amphitheatre style so the children could watch the lambs being fed and hold the smaller animals.
At one side were a group of hutches and cages and a large aviary, filling the other end, pens. Each had a little info card 'Tilly and Ludo, Dexter twins, born January 08'.

We heard a movement as we walked in, but couldn't immediately see where it had come from. It smelled bad in there, the usual farmyard smell mixed with something much worse. The cages had bodies in them. The bodies of some of the rodents told of an uglier scene past, as animals trapped with no food turned on each other. The rabbits had died a gentler death, laid out as thirst or hunger took away their energy. In the aviary, small birds were littered the floor, the incubator was horrible - tiny chicks dry and eyeless. But that wasn't the end.

The first of the pens was covered with mesh. Inside, 6 young bantams blinked up at us. Scraggy, motionless, but still alive.
Then then the source of the noise, the goats - a nubian, a pygmy and an angora made themselves known to us, coming straight to the side. Their eyes perhaps duller than they should be, but they were on their feet and expecting food. The next pen was still and the main source of the smell - a litter of piglets, perhaps taken to early from their sow. The same with the lambs - kept penned in and motherless so that children could love them.
We could see that the next enclosure would have held cattle, but as we approached we couldn't see or hear anything to suggest they were there. It wasn't till we looked over that we saw there were 3. Lying listless, mouths open showing teeth. Flies sitting on the stickiness around their eyes. But their bodies still rose and fell with breath.

And so we gained responsibility and with it purpose, meaning. No more marking time. Now we were working against it. When they bring us out, it will be with those animals who had been trapped to starve and we will tell their story.