Lois
Lois had an insatiable desire to change bovine-kind to her ideals. The other cows grunted their disgust and simply had her ostracized from the herd. Lois tried not to let it bother her, but being the lovely and rigid little Holstein she was, she decided it was time to take action.
She flew to South America, where many of her brothers and sisters were being raised for slaughter only to feed those millions of slovenly Americans whom she had grown to distrust with all her beastly stature. Nothing could have prepared her for the sights she saw in South America, not even those films she used to view when the farmer family sat in their house watching that flickering beast—they would laugh and giggle, and Lois the cow would shudder, making her udders flop about in an unseemly way, nearly curdling her milk. The poverty she observed in those little shanties in Brazil, South America, left an indelible stain on her memory; one she knew would forever taint her milk and meat.
Shortly after her voyage to South America, and knowing there was something ominous about her that no one could precisely determine, Lois the cow wandered through Central America, observing the atrocities of humans to humans, humans to animals, humans to the land and trees and air and humans to the water.
With her tainted milk, she attempted to feed those who would drink from her, but they soon died as a direct result of ingesting her poison. What could she do? There was nothing she could think of to change the quality of her milk. Realizing this was actually an advantage, because the humans would never butcher her for the living meat within her body and her milk was so sour and useless, Lois sought to become some kind of guru, a leader, someone who could turn these self-destructive humans around, make them realize their stupidity and their erroneous ways before it was too late for every living, breathing mammal on the planet.
You see, Lois knew the insects didn't care one way or the other about the human equation. The more the atmosphere was screwed up, the more the weather changed in schizophrenic ways, and the more dirt in the sky and water, the better off they would be. Adjustment was something they'd done for millions of years, so why change because of a few billion ephemerals?
Lois also realized the rest of animal-kind was incredibly worried about the whole unsettling human problem and were unable to come to a viable conclusion as to how to change what was becoming a precarious time for all concerned. As fate would have it, Lois made a decision that would change her life indelibly. She decided to move on to something she had never dreamed of when she was one of the herd at the old Johnson farm. She would become a moving, powerful, changing force in the world of humans.
She traveled avidly, seeking those who would assist her. She recruited everything and everyone she could.
Forests were quite useless as far as traveling was concerned, but she could use them to smoke out the humans if she needed to. Sacrifices were needed, she explained to the forests with a yearning moo.
Several animals joined in her passion and followed her blindly. There was a huge grizzly named Gerald who had just about had enough of the whole human situation. An alligator named Jane slithered with her, but because of her very nature, several of the small furry animals who had gathered together with her met their end when she became ravenous.
Lois soon learned how to put a stop to that. She fed her tainted milk, in very small doses and over a long period of time, to make all the smaller animals who followed her undesirable to Jane. Lois suggested Jane solely eat those humans whom they could not convert to her way of thinking. This sat very well with Jane, because the young alligator was incredibly fond of human flesh. She had oft had it, but something about receiving permission from the animals’ newest leader made the thought of eating human flesh even more desirable.
Others followed Lois. A gnu named Herbert, a moose who wished to remain anonymous, a mouse with a name not pronounceable by the rest of Lois' party and disciples, an ox who was so irritated about nearly becoming extinct and useless in the eyes of humans that she killed several humans herself just to watch Jane devour them, a few bats with some very strange ideas about the whole crusade, some sea otters, a beaver, a giraffe they stole from a zoo, several elephants who were so vociferous and particular about who they wanted to slaughter in the name of saving the planet for future mammal survival that Lois had no choice but to let them continue their rampage.
It soon became apparent to Lois that things were getting out of cloven hoof, if she could excuse herself and use the term so loosely.
Over two years into her crusade the troupe came upon a human male who could barely speak. Lois figured he must have been barely a year old. The motley but powerful group adopted him into their fold so they could use his voice as he grew older and raise the consciousness of the people. When he was finally old enough, and when Lois was certain they had gained enough power to be a force in the American threshold of politics, they used Andrew as their voice.
Lois decided to call him Andrew after her great-great grandfather, who became lunch for some traveling hobos back in the thirties.
America woke up to the new bizarre political party and was quite taken aback at what they saw. The first reaction of the contemporary powers that held so much control was to destroy that which they did not understand. Before they could enact their plan, Lois had Andrew infiltrate the entire system, and within a year, Lois and her army of mammals, reptiles, birds and amphibians had virtual control of the entire country.
Lois was responsible for some of the most amazing reforms of conservation and pollution control ever seen in the nation. She began to release information about the incredible corruption which had preceded her. The people whom she was fast becoming leader over screamed in agony at their blind ignorance. They bewailed how they'd been duped for so many years, centuries even, but now with Lois taking the helm of the sinking ship, they were certain the world would soon become a wonderful place for mammals to live in once again. It would take a long time, they knew, but at least there was a hint that humans and animals would survive without anyone getting too ego- and ethnocentric, causing the planet’s ecosystem’s ultimate destruction.
One day, about a year and a half into the regime Lois had planned with such incredible care, Jane decided she was sick of the whole thing, especially since Andrew was still a member of the party, and bit Lois. Unfortunately, because of the time spent in South America and the various places in Central America, Jane died a horribly painful death from the poison soaking through the blood of Lois.
Even though it had been years since that first trip into South America, Lois's milk and blood were still incredibly potent and, above all, fatal.
Most of her followers were much dismayed at this turn of events, and Lois knew she had to quell the apprehension. She made an announcement to all her subjects, as she was so fond of calling them, that there was nothing more she could do about Jane and Jane's surprising number of followers. Had Lois known earlier about the alligator faction, she would have put an end to it sooner. No longer would she be so ignorant.
Soon Lois rounded up those animals who disagreed with any of her ideas, and with Andrew's help and okay, she had them mercilessly slaughtered like the cattle she had observed so many years ago in Brazil.
She had to have it that way, or else how would she rule? She kept getting more and more strict as the weeks wore on, and soon, before she realized what had happened, all the original animals who helped her begin the regime were dead. Only Andrew stood by her side. All the recent animal converts to her way of life followed her blindly and even helped Lois destroy those original followers who began to question her.
Andrew had gathered more and humans into the regime, and it wasn't long before Lois put a stop to that. Without informing Andrew, she had all his cohorts murdered in front of their families, and after that, she had the families sent to slaughterhouses to become food for the lions and tigers and other carnivorous beasts she knew and loved so well. Lois had always been partial to the meat-eaters and envied them and longed to be like them. But she knew her very nature prevented that, and she resented it more than she realized, until Andrew brought it up to her. She was more than dismayed at Andrew turning against her. She could forgive him for his youthful idiocy of trying to infiltrate the regime with humans, but this she could not forgive. So, with a wave of her leg, she had Andrew taken away to be destroyed by some birds, whom she realized were quite anxious for some human flesh.
But Lois forgot that Andrew, who had fed from her tainted milk for years, was an unsavory dish, and the birds resented Lois for trying to make them eat Andrew. They attempted to destroy her, but she only said the word and her loyal followers destroyed them all.
It wasn't long before Lois had built a fortress around herself, and only she and Andrew stayed, giving orders from behind steel-encased walls. Lois felt she was going mad with Andrew so close, and she could tell Andrew wasn't enjoying himself. She watched the madness of loneliness crowd him and sorrowed as drugs and alcohol became his only meals. In a matter of two years, Andrew was dead, lying on the floor, a shell of a man she once raised from a child. Cold tears fell from her eyes, and she knew what she had to do.
No longer could she stand the madness crawling in her brain like a furrowing beetle. She burst through the long-shut-up missile silos and gave the order to press all the buttons. Many refused, but these too were destroyed by those loyal to Lois who did not care that she was infected with dripping green slime and pus and madness.
As the explosions sounded outside, Lois’s heart stopped beating, and she fell over on a hopeless rabbit that had followed her for years. Right as the blackness settled in, she noticed a little insect beginning to gnaw at her eye. She also saw the smile on its face.
~