Oreillette, the cow muse, at the heart of the tumult

While the anger of the farmers does not subside and Emmanuel Macron inaugurated the agricultural show on Saturday, to boos, the animals of the show find themselves in the front row.

Her name is Oreillette, she is 1.56 meters tall and weighs 800 kilos. Oreillette, a beautiful five-year-old tricolor Norman cow, is the star of the 2024 Agricultural Show. Like her predecessors Cerise, Ideale and Ovalie, she was carefully selected by a jury, chosen from 190,000 other cows Normans, since it was the breed in the spotlight this year, for its “beautiful glasses” and his “good udders”.

This year some people tried to steal the show, the chickens having decided to “take their destiny into their own hands” by launching a petition on the internet to say “stop the monopoly of the show’s muse cows”. They demand to be able to have their moment of glory too. But is the fate of living room animals so enviable? While the 4,000 animals at the show are already subjected to a lot of stress each year, the first weekend of the 2024 edition will have been particularly chaotic for them too. Cows, in particular, had to be evacuated from their enclosures as they found themselves at the heart of clashes between CRS and farmers.

President Emmanuel Macron also admitted that Oreillette had “much merit”while from his straw box he stroked her head, under the jeers and the names of birds: “Go away”, “Manure”, “liar”. In Normandy’s memory, we have never witnessed such chaos.

An agricultural system running out of steam

And Oreillette is not the most to be pitied, a goat in the living room having found itself stuck in a fight, its owner helplessly screaming: “My goat! There is a goat there”as shown in a video by journalist Rémy Buisine.

Then there were all these journalists who came very seriously to ask Oreillette her point of view on the tumult, planting their microphones under her snout, under the crackling flashes, while other political leaders came to caress her with their promises. The ppromises of a better future for those who raise animals and who rebel against lean times,orollar of an agricultural system that is on its last legs and whose show seems to have lost its magic, to the point that Oreillette perhaps wonders if she is really proud to be its muse.