Venus is not a cow: a reply to the Bureau, eleven years late

I have a cow missing and they have given me a planet.

That is the whole of my position and I could stop there, but Shane says the search engines like it when you go on a bit, so I will go on a bit.

In March 1994 I wrote to the Bureau of Meteorology, because the pamphlet the Men in Beige left had their number on the back and because I did not, at that stage, know who else you write to when a saucer lifts your cow out of the Top Paddock. I have now been writing to various Bureaus, Departments, Agencies and one Regional Office for eleven years, and I have kept every reply in a Tupperware container under the bed. Noreen calls it “the container”. I call it Exhibit B, Exhibit A being the tape.

Below, for the record, is every explanation I have been offered for the events of 14 March 1994. I have numbered them so that the next person who writes to me can simply quote a number and save us both the stamp.

The list

1. Venus. The first and still the most insulting. Venus does not come down to windmill height. Venus does not have a beam. Venus has never, to my knowledge, taken a Reserve Champion.
2. A lenticular cloud. A cloud with a landing light. A cloud that went straight up with no run-up. I have lived under this sky for fifty-something years and I know what a cloud does. A cloud does not make the dogs hum in B flat.
3. A weather balloon. From where? The nearest balloon launch is hundreds of kilometres away and Noreen rang them. They were very nice and said they do not launch at 2:47 am and do not, as a rule, pick things up.
4. Swamp gas. There is no swamp. There is the Big Dam, which is a dam. I asked whether dam gas was a thing and the reply said “possibly”, which I have logged as a concession.
5. A flock of birds flying in formation with their headlights on. I am not making this up. A man from an Agency said this to me on the telephone in 1996 and then said “sorry, I mean reflecting the moonlight”. The moon was not up. I checked. Dr Faraday checked. Shane found a website that checked.
6. A military exercise. The RAAF said they had nothing in the area. Then they said if they had something in the area they could not say. Then they stopped replying. Three positions in one letter, which Dr Faraday says is itself a kind of craft.
7. A man on a quad bike with a spotlight. From Senior Constable Taggart, who later admitted the man on the quad bike was him, looking for me, because Noreen had rung to say I was “out in the rain filming the dogs again”. That was at 6 am. The cow was taken at 2:47. The timeline does not work and he knows it.
8. Mass hysteria. There was one of me. I asked how one person has a mass and the reply did not address it.
9. Drought stress. We were not in drought. This has been covered. The pamphlet has been covered. I will not cover the pamphlet again.
10. “The animal may have wandered.” Beryl did not wander. Beryl was a cow who stood where she was put and thought about it. In nine years she wandered once, to the house, because the gate was open and she liked Noreen.
11. The receipt. See Noreen. Noreen will tell you about the receipt. The receipt is a matter between me and my wife and is not an explanation, it is a piece of paper, and I have a whole Tupperware container of those.

What is missing from the list

What is missing from the list is a cow.

Eleven explanations, five government departments, two Bureaus that may be the same Bureau, one police officer and a planet, and not one of them has produced a single Droughtmaster, 540 kilograms, ear tag QLD-0447-B, quiet, good mother, slightly white on the near-side flank. They can tell me what it wasn’t. They cannot tell me where she is.

That is not meteorology. That is a cover-up with a letterhead.

A proposal

I propose that the Bureau, whichever one it is, send one person to Boolaroo Downs, in daylight, not in beige, to stand in the Burnt Circle and tell me to my face it was Venus. I will provide tea. Noreen will provide a scone. The dogs will provide a note.

If they will not come, I will take that as what it is.

Keep watching the paddock.

— Warren

Document U8MC-05-0500. Status: CONFIRMED. This file is retained indefinitely, or until the Men in Beige ask for it, whichever is never.

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