in the comment section someone says that 186000 cows—on average—are slaughtered daily across the globe. how true that is i/m not so sure but it feels real enough while watching the 13-second tik tok video of 18000 cows mooing and bellowing and grunting as they burn alive in the space of 1 million square feet, which so happens to be the fountain of a running joke across the comment section as redditors compare such a sizeable but ironically cramped space to football fields, washing machines (which leads to stuck step sisters and step moms), or one particularly irreverent contrast in cat tongues. all of this to measure living quarters of the more than 59000 cows residing in the 22-acre south fork dairy farm just 66 miles south of amarillo, texas. the 13-second clip is short enough to watch on a loop, over and over, cows burning alive, dying again and again in a random act of slaughter. i don/t blame redditors for making light of another tragedy, or for my ill-feeling capacity for worldly horror pushed over the precipice. what else can be done amidst the vaporous connection the internet has to offer? what else can we do against muscular industries motivated by profit? the fiery system by which we live and operate thins the loss into soft rounded numbers (all statistics do that) and write-offs, something called the cost of doing business. while the casual horror of 18000 cows trapped amidst the blaze, born in the wrong place and time, seem to have an insignificant play against the wastewater from the facility draining into the brazos river basin, it stands to reason we acknowledge that in 2019 the dairy farm was allowed by the texas commission on environmental quality (the very same agency tasked with disposing of the 18000 desiccated corpses) to boost the dairy farm/s capacity of cows, swell manure production by 50% under the same permit, and that the failing machinery/s duty of managing the influx of manure to process methane, an extremely flammable gas, malfunctioned under the weight of production and profit (overheated the fire marshal determined) igniting the explosion into a 13-second tik tok video on reddit in which 18000 cows standing 3 to 4 feet apart screamed helplessly in the equivalent of 26 football fields in a blaze of heat and smoke not intended for brisket or hamburgers but in the reckless and inhumane treaty we hold to nature. this is one symptom of a larger illness, and yet, i still eat meat. i/ve made casual jokes about consuming raw steak, bloody, still with heartbeat, while 18000 cows bellow stampeding flames of an unconcerned day in the world of the internet burning within my consciousness. the world hasn/t stopped yet. life still carries on. and although i uninstalled reddit because of indifferent algorithms feeding across my fingers, the insouciant and blithe process of cosmic horror continues to inundate the society/s broader consciousness without me. my space for living is much greater than the 18000 cows that died horrendously, my footprint weighs more than the smoke and ash cloud that pummeled the texas skyline, and i continue to eat one steak at a time.
Reynaldo Hinojosa Jr is a Tejano-born writer and musician who considers the blurring lines of identity and discovering new selves within the in-between. He finds humor in dark places. Love in the abstract. And is constantly questioning how stories can be told. You can find his work in Runner Magazine, Wayne Literary Review, and The Woodward Review.