Many animals are bred as livestock and inevitably end up headed to the slaughterhouse — so we can’t really blame them when they decide to make a run for it.
Sometimes cattle fated to be meat run for their lives, escaping from the farm — and sometimes they do a good job evading capture.
Like one bull, who has been on the run on Long Island for over a day, leaving locals frantically trying to locate him — and hopefully get him to a better place.
According to CBS New York, the 1,500-pound bull escaped from a farm in Manorville by breaking through a fence. The bull was reportedly meant to be sacrificed as part of a religious ritual for the Muslim holiday Eid. Operators from the Suffolk SPCA told News 12 the facility was legal.
With the bull at large in suburban Long Island, animal rights groups joined the search — on the condition that the bull be spared and allowed to be relocated to a sanctuary.
“There is no need to kill an animal for sacrifice. He is terrified. He is running for his life right now just like you or I would if someone was trying to murder us,” said John DiLeonardo, president of Long Island Orchestrating for Nature, told CBS New York.
But after two days of searching, the bull hasn’t been secured. He’s still at large — much to the surprise of locals. The bull was first spotted in Mastic on Tuesday morning.
“I look in my rearview mirror and all of a sudden I’m like, ‘There is a bull running down the street!’” Mastic resident Jeannine Bramer told CBS.
In one video captured on a Ring doorbell, two young girls see the bull going down their street, and tell their disbelieving mom “There’s a cow outside!”
The bull’s freedom run has caused a media sensation in New York. Long Islanders have been having “naming contests” honoring hometown celebrities like Billy Joel and Alec Baldwin.
But the situation is not all a laughing matter. The bull caused a major highway to be temporarily closed off, and there are concerns that the bull could seriously hurt someone.
“The most important thing is to make sure that no human beings get hurt during the course of this rescue,” Lisa Jaeger of Jaeger Animal Wildlife Rescue told CBS New York. “That’s really our main objective. This thing is, from what I understand, over a 1,000-pound bull and it could run into traffic and it could kill somebody.”
But despite a large search effort, the bull remains at large, surprisingly adept and evading human capture. “He’s big, he’s young, he’s fast,” Frankie Floridia of Strong Island Rescue told Newsday. “He’s also got a dark black coat, so he was hard to see at night in the shadows.”
And earlier today, rescue groups involved with the search tried a new tactic: trying to lure him in with a little romance.
They enlisted the help of a female cow in heat, named Normal Jean, hoping that the bull would be lured to her.
“He has food in here, he has water in here. What else is going to bring him out?” Floridia told News 12. The bull is believed to be hiding in the woods, with plenty of means for survival.
“So, we figure we’d bring a girl.”
Sadly, not even this worked to lure in the bull. Rescuers say they were out with Norma Jean for over two hours, and he didn’t show.
“We tied her up for a couple hours and she mooed her little head off,” Floridia told the New York Post. “I don’t think her moos carried far enough.”
“The scent was there, and despite the amazing efforts of the team, he didn’t show up.”
With the rescue teams going back to the drawing boards, the bull remains on the lam.
While we can understand why the bull would be so desperate to hide after being nearly slaughtered, we hope rescuers will soon be able to take him in safe and sound and relocate him to a sanctuary.
It would be similar to a story from last month, in which a cow who escaped from a slaughterhouse was spared, thanks to songwriter Diane Warren.
We can only hope a similar happy ending awaits this bull soon enough.
“Once we get him, we’ll get him to a sanctuary where he can live out his days,” Floridia told Newsday. “That’d be the plan.”
We hope this bull is found and brought in safely so he can live the rest of his life in peace at a sanctuary. We’ll keep you updated on this developing story.
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