A poem about cows and climate change

Standard
A CHANGE IS IN THE WIND
Belch! 

They’re watching us, these things called humans
Pens out, monitoring our rumens
Cows no fun

Pointing their fingers, shuffling their sheets
Murmuring about the planet’s heat
Cows help sun

Worried faces, showing their petulance
About our burps and our flatulence
Cows need bung

Uttering words, most common ‘methane’
Hoping cows would kindly refrain
Cow’s bad bum

With a gut like a still, our only torment
Grass sloshes around, slow ferment
Cow’s big drum

Big cows with balls are the worst offenders
Blame males, that’ll help defend us
Cows well hung

They think it’s best to fit us with gas masks 
Give us new grass to stop the farts
Cow’s new tum

They’ll want us to dispose of our very own cow pats
Placing them into underground vats
Cows no dung

See they carve us up or milk us bone dry
Now they say we make all things fry
Cows hard done

And we’re so over all their bovine jokes
Go away, pick on some ‘udder’ folk  
Cow bad pun 

And don’t they belch things out, that’s a fact
What’s spewing from that factory stack?
Cows not dumb

See all we want to do is chew our cud
Moo, poo, trudge though the mud 
Cows hum drum

So it’s over, all of this crap is enough
We’re taking a stand, getting so tough
Cows done fun

Let’s fight for ruminant freedom
Run with the buffalo, the sheep
Let’s herd together, fight to the end
Cows are one

Let’s stampede the Golden Arches
Go on long protest marches
Fight on beaches and on pastures
Even take to air in the fastest
Cow Top Gun

And now the end is very near
The day that all of us cattle fear
The last to the abattoir is to be tanned
Our fight was called ‘Muster’s Last Stand’
Cows out gunned

So if this story shocks, scares and amazes
That we Daisies could be ‘pushing up daisies’
Next time you question our windy emissions
Consider the risk of milk and meat omissions
Cow’s life done

(Author’s note: It is reported that ruminants, including cows, are directly responsible for 6.3% of anthropogenic global warming. Apologies to Dana Lyons for using some ideas from his song ‘Cows with Guns’)

© Neil Dufty

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