Once there was a man who had a small farm on which he planted beans, pumkins, cucumbers, potatoes, eggplants, tomatoes, peanuts, garlic and onions. He also had a lemon tree, two plum and two almond trees. At a certain point he acquired a heifer, and called her Rivka. Unfortunately Rivka ate a lot of the man's vegetables, and insects and fungus ruined the rest of the crop. The man was hungry, and decided to eat Rivka.
But when he went out to her at night, to slit her throat, she looked at him affectionately with her big brown eyes and licked his hand which held the knife. The man was unable to kill her, and told himself he would let her live another month. But when he returned again in a month's time, his belly grumbling and his pants loose about his waist, Rivka sat quietly in her muddy stall, thinner too, and gazed at him with the trusting eyes that a young child gazes at her father with.
The man realised he was unable to take Rivka's life. he decided, instead, that he would wait for Rivka to die from old age, or disease hastened by hunger (there was not much food or fodder on the farm, for man or beast), and then, when she had died of natural causes, he would eat her. And so he waited several months until, in the spring, Rivka closed her eyes, exhaled with a sigh, and returned her soul to her creator.
But by then the man was too thin and weak to butcher Rivka's carcass, so he lay quietly next to her for a while, and then went back into the farmhouse, to lay for awhile on his bed, to rest.
And there he died a few weeks later.
And they both lived happily ever after.
