DEVELOPINGENHANCED ×212I want to say at the outset that I did not go looking for this. I have a station to run and a bore pump that Noreen says we are still paying off. But at 7:30 this morning I went up to the Top Paddock to check the trough and there, dead centre in the Burnt Circle, where the grass has not grown since 14 March last year, was a cow. Lying down. Not moving.
Ear tag QLD-0451-B. Her name is Maureen.
The scene
I approached from the south, slowly, filming. The Panasonic was on the fridge where it lives now, charged, because I have learned. The circle is nine metres across and still black as a frypan, and Maureen was placed, and I use that word deliberately, placed, exactly in the middle of it. Not near the middle. In it. Like a compass had been used.
There were no tracks in. There were no tracks out. There was no blood anywhere on the animal or the ground. There were no footprints, human or otherwise. There was, and I checked, no receipt.
Her legs were folded under her in the manner that Dr Faraday describes in his literature as “the Return Posture”, which is how the craft set them down, he says, because the beam “releases from the feet upward”. I had not read that at the time. I have read it since. It fits.
Why this is a return and not a new taking
People at the Royal have asked me why, if the craft came back, they would leave a cow rather than take one. The answer is obvious to anyone who has done any reading. They were bringing Beryl back and they got the wrong cow.
Maureen is the same colour as Beryl, same frame, same mother actually, and in the dark from a great height with the rain going they would look identical. They came down with Beryl’s co-ordinates, found the circle, lowered the nearest matching animal, and left. Somewhere up there a Grey is looking at a clipboard thinking, that’s not right.
Which means, and I have had to sit down about this, that Beryl is still up there, and that she is in their system, and that they are trying.
The animal stands up
At approximately 7:52 am, while I was narrating the position of the legs for the tape, Maureen opened one eye, looked at me, and stood up. She stretched. She walked out of the circle, in a straight line, towards the trough, and had a drink.
I want to be very clear that this does not change anything. Of course she stood up. They returned her alive. That is the whole point. If she had been dead the sceptics would have said “a dead cow, Warren, they die, it’s a paddock”. She was returned in good order and that is in fact more alarming, because it means they have got the process down.
Senior Constable Taggart attended at 11 am. He watched Maureen eating for some time and then asked me what, specifically, I was reporting. I said a return. He asked if any animal was missing. I said Beryl, obviously, still. He wrote something on his pad that I could see from the angle was Livestock: Miscellaneous again and I said Brett, mate, it’s a different cow, and he said that’s what Miscellaneous is for.
Examination
Dr Faraday came out after lunch and examined Maureen with the metal detector he uses for the beach. It went off near her left ear, which he logged as a possible implant, and also near the fence, which he logged as a fence.
He found a small triangular mark on her rump that could be a brand, a tick bite or “a routing stamp”. He is leaning towards routing stamp. He has photographed it alongside a twenty-cent piece for scale and the photographs are with the file.
Maureen’s temperature was normal. Her eyes were normal. Her manner was, in Dr Faraday’s words, “unbothered, which is itself a bother”.
A word from management
Maureen lies down in that circle most mornings because Warren burned the tyres there and the ground holds the heat overnight. Every cow on the place has had a go at it. It is the warmest nine metres on the station. She was asleep. Cows sleep. The triangle on her rump is from the crush. — Noreen
Where this leaves us
The Collective, which as of this morning is me, Dr Faraday and Shane, who is eight, has upgraded the Top Paddock to a Return Site. The gate stays open. The trough stays full. I have put a tarpaulin over the centre of the circle so the next animal they set down doesn’t get wet, and I have painted Beryl’s tag number on the tarpaulin in white house paint, large, facing up.
If they can read, and Dr Faraday says they can read, they will know they have the wrong one. If they can’t read, they will at least know that someone down here is paying attention and would like a word.
Maureen is fine. She is in the house paddock now where I can see her from the kitchen. She keeps looking up. I keep looking at her looking up. Noreen has closed the curtains.
Keep watching the paddock.
— Warren
Document U8MC-95-0100. Status: DEVELOPING. This file is retained indefinitely, or until the Men in Beige ask for it, whichever is never.