A bobby and his friend named Boe.

This one’s a long time coming, a story not yet told, that’s been swirling around my mind since the night it happened.

Inside a slaughterhouse, in the waiting pens. It was the first-time on a night out investigating that I have ever cried on. I walked around the corner; I knew who we were looking for – you. The glow of my torch lit the pen in which you stood with the others. On the cold, hard metal floors stood so many frightened animals, without food and without a chance to live. As soon as I saw we were right, and you were there, it felt like a knife stuck into my heart and my stomach wanted to escape from inside me, I could already feel the tears welting up in my eyes.

As I approach you and the other calf’s instantly you all reached your noses up to me and as I let my hand out to you, you all started suckling on my fingers. I wondered if you hoped I was your mum, or if I could be an adoptive mother since you had been stolen from your real one. I wondered if you wanted me to be someone that gives you comfort, love and takes care of you to set you up for a long and beautiful life.

As we followed you and your friends around trying to get the perfect picture, I got the pleasure of spending more time with you than anyone else would have ever gotten to. You had no interest in pesky photos when there were fingers to be suckled and bodies to nuzzle into. What curious little babies you were, so sweet, so innocent, and so trusting of me, when I share the form of the monsters soon to destroy you.

One of your friends had trouble standing up to get themselves water, so we tried to help them up. Their legs were deformed, and coming closer together in the middle, making it difficult for them to move at all. This earned them the name Boe, because of his little bowed legs.

Tear streamed down my face most of the time I spent with you and your friends, it’s so hard to explain the feeling of loving someone who you know in a matter of hours will be brutally slaughtered. At one point, tears were dripping off my nose and on this particularly hot night, a fellow investigator asked me if I was dripping sweat.

This is not a rescue story. This baby stayed behind. This baby who I spent time with, who suckled my fingers, that followed me around the holding pen for what felt like a minute and eternity all at once died only hours after I met him.

The following night when I went out, I put my gloves on and I could still smell him on them. I felt the adrenaline flood my insides as I told myself ‘I know why I’m here’. It was a reminder of why I put myself in dangerous (and sometimes frightening) situations time and time again, and why so many other wonderful investigators do the same.

It was for him, and all others like him – nothing else mattered anymore. When I looked into his eyes that night, I made him a promise; that as long as others were to suffer, I wouldn’t rest, that I would stand up and fight and he wouldn’t have died in vain.

There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about those babies in that holding pen – I don’t know that there ever will be. I had never known heartbreak the way that I felt it that night.

He was a baby, not even a week old and I watched him die 24 hours after falling in love with him.

Little baby boy, I’ll never forget you, I’ll never stop fighting for you, you were someone and you mattered. I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you.

Rest in Peace.