"Hello? Are you still there?"

The receptionist is still there. She tells you that there was a time when Cows were sacred in German mythology. “They were our first metaphors, our first artworks, painted on cave walls of our ancestors.” She is practically quoting John Berger and the rest of the conversation is inspired by his essay Why Look at Animals? It goes something like this:

“Do you remember the birds?”It is a rhetorical question and you are not supposed to answer it.

“Do you remember the goats?” you ask - another rhetorical question. “They screamed like humans sometimes!”

“Do you remember the Syrian woodpeckers?”
“Do you remember the domesticated guinea pigs?”
“Do you remember the dogs?”
“Do you remember those small annoying dogs that never stopped barking?” She responds.

“They stopped barking!!”

You tell her that the wolves came back to Denmark year 2012. “They had started to colonize Europe. Moving along belts of vegetation, they chose to travel in silence, undocumented. The Danish government built a fence. Now there is only a fence, separating you and me, along the border of Germany.”