At first, Gillespie misses the exciting life as a dairy farmer and often worries about the future of the farm. However, as the pig is an outstanding entrepreneur, together they quickly revamp the farming business.
Gillespie grows to like the new lifestyle. They never have to get up at five o´clock in the morning again. One morning, at around nine o´clock, they are having a leisurely breakfast. Gillespie looks up over the newspaper and announces to the pig and the dog,
“Cows, …who´d have them?
Lily had always been a bright spark and a bright spark among dumb cows is easy to spot.
“What the red rashers is she planning now,” sighed Gillespie.
She was forever up to no good. Last year she burnt down all the butcher shops in town and forced all the butchers to go vegetarian or she would mince them all up in their own vices. Oh she could be vicious all right and her pyromaniac tendencies were getting out of hand. Luckily she had never actually harmed anyone. Gillespie wonders where she is off to now.
Just as the farmer, the pig and the dog head back to the house to drink tea and contemplate a life less dairy farming, Lily and all the cattle involved are docking in a quiet area off the coast of India. Once inland they meet up with the local skinny cows. To their delight all the stories they heard about India are true. Cow heaven is indeed on earth.
The dog dashes away and barks at the kitchen window. Out pops the pig, glasses dangling on the tip of his snout, head deeply buried in the newspaper. He looks up at Boozer then follows him to the field where Gillespie is still standing with his head buzzing with flies.
“Read this Gillespie,” orders the pig as he points to the headline -
SLAUGHTERHOUSE BURNT TO GROUND
Gillespie borrows the pig´s glasses and reads slowly, lips silently mouthing the words. Some spittle dribbles from his chin and splashes off boozer´s head. He stops. He looks at the pig. The pig says nothing. He just points at another headline.
TWO CRUISERS HIJACKED
Gillespie can´t link the two stories together but when he reads a sentence that is repeated in both articles a ray of light emerges from behind a rain cloud and nestles itself around his head. The flies flee as he reads out loud, “ detectives suspect the culprits are cows.”
Gillespie opens the gate. Boozer barks. Then a thousand violins shrilling any old note and some idiot rattling bells sound inside Gillespie´s head. He turns around. To his horror the chickens are out of the chicken run and they are trying to play their out of tune violins. Gillespie shouts,”Go back to bed,” at them and they slink back to the run. He looks at boozer who quickly hides the bells and a conductors baton behind his back. Farmer Gillespie grabs the bells off him. “Hey,” he starts, “ these belong to Lily and the other cows,”
Then they enter the fields to investigate. The field is empty. Only a few seagulls float down onto the grass.
“Seagulls inland Boozer, that means bad weather´s coming.” says Gillespie in a very sage-like way. Boozer barks something that sounds abusive. Luckily Gillespie doesn´t speak dog, but he soon gets the message. “What the blue blazes? Where are the cows?
He roares so loudly he almost blows the trousers off himself.
“BOOZER, GO GET THE PIG. HE´LL KNOW WHAT TO DO HERE.”
The rest of the cow bells are lying embedded in the frost hard cow pats. Boozer prances back to the farmhouse leaving Gillespie standing there with his mouth dangling wide open and the flies buzzing in and out of his two ears.
She doesn´t want to draw any unwanted attention to herself as she makes these plans so she potters about the field everyday doing cow things. She obediently follows the milking routine – up at six in the morning, walk to the milking machines in single file and then back to graze a little. Then trundled back in an orderly fashion and hooked up to the milking machines at six in the evening. And once more brought back to the fields to graze and sleep. She gives no one any inkling of the startling propaganda she is spreading among the fields.
It is a bright frosty morning when Farmer Gillespie wakes at five o´clock in the morning. He needs no alarm clock to get him out of bed. He simply says to himself before retiring for the night, “get up at five o´clock.” He says a little prayer for all his family, friends and animals and then he turns in for the night.
The morning is chillingly quiet. He pulls on his rubber boots that were once green but now are so caked in mud you can´t tell what colour they are. Boozer the dog bounces out of the cabin and on up to the lush fields. Farmer Gillespie grabs an old handle of a brush that serves him well as a walking stick and trudges on up after him.
They get to the muddy tracks that have been sculptured by the tractor. The mud has frozen hard.
It´s lumpy and hard to walk on. They get to the gate. Gillespie shouts at Boozer to get the cows. He squeezes under the gate. Its only a routine, the cows know to be lined out and ready to go at this time. They generally ignore Boozer´s persuasions.
Lily Cow is fed up. She has just discovered that all her brothers are about to be sent off to the slaughterhouse and she is going to be milked senseless until the end of her days, and that is the lucky option. “Flip that anyway,” she says, “I´ll rustle me up a gang of dairy cows and we´ll get organised and bust our brothers and all the other cattle out of that hellhole. Then we´ll hijack the first boat we find and steer a course for India.”
The other cows just look at her dumbly and chew the cud, they have heard this kind of ranting before. Lily stares up into the rolling clouds and dreams of India. It sounds like a fine place. That´s if it really exists. Apparently you can be condemned to death for killing cows there. Cattle are considered sacred. It doesn´t matter if it is an accident or not, you just don´t kill cows. A little bird once told her that she had heard of a man who was punished for accidentally knocking down a cow that was crossing the road. It was too good to believe. Cow heaven is really here on earth. All she has to do now is draw up the plans for the big breakout.