How much did search cost for Buddy the beefalo?
Buddy the beefalo roamed the town of Plymouth for eight months before his capture. On Thursday, he heads to an animal sanctuary in Florida.
The cost to taxpayers for the search, capture, housing, feeding and transportation of the wayward beefalo was exactly nothing.
“It just cost me my Friday nights with the wife,” Plymouth Police Capt. Ed Benecchi said.
It didn’t even cost that. Benecchi actually took his wife out a few times to search for Buddy, who escaped certain death in the form of a Terryville meat processing plant.
Capturing Buddy was Benecchi’s personal hobby during the eight months the animal was loose. Buddy became something of a white whale for the police captain, though he said the safety of local residents and the animal was always at the forefront of his mind.
“This is the story I hope I’m remembered for,” he said.
Benecchi used a thermal imaging camera already owned by the police department, and supplied the batteries himself. Nightvision goggles were loaned by a fellow police officer.
“The captain did it all on his own time,” Plymouth Police Chief Karen Krasicky said. “If my captain chooses to chase a beefalo on his own time, he can do that.”
All the other costs associated with Buddy’s care during and after the search were covered by money raised during a GoFundMe campaign set up by the local police union.
About $8,500 was raised in the three days the campaign was live, drawing donations from as far away as Hawaii.
A fence was erected to keep Buddy in a closed-in area of about a half a mile, out of fear he might get hit by a car or get startled and attack a pedestrian. The beefalo is a cross between a bison and domestic cattle, weighing about 1,000 pounds, and might have done a lot of damage.
“There was a clear public safety issue here,” Benecchi said.
But that meant Buddy had to be managed during the winter, so $500 from the money raised went to reimburse a local farmer who supplied the beefalo with food and a heater to keep his water from freezing.
“Every night, he brought Buddy his food,” Benecchi said. “As it got colder, the water started to freeze, so he bought a heater for the water bucket.”
Another $539 paid for the tranquilizer the veterinarian used to safely transport Buddy, which cost $300. The beefalo did about $200 in damage to fencing when he was caught, and what’s left will go to the Becket, Mass., farm that owns the cow.
Buddy will spend the rest of his days at a sanctuary. He makes his last journey on Thursday, and Benecchi will follow on Friday to make sure the beefalo is squared away.
Again, Benecchi is paying for his own transportation and rental car.
The search for Buddy the beefalo may have been Benecchi’s obsession over the last eight months, but it was Krasicky who named him, asking during a briefing, “what about our little buddy?”
Krasicky and Benecchi sound surprised still at the amount of attention the story received over the course of the last eight months. A local news station called it “operation sneaky hoof.”
“One of the news organizations made it like this big to-do,” Benecchi said. “It was just one guy in his pickup truck pulling a rope and trying to close a gate.”
But both said it was a distraction from negative world events that have dominated the news over the last year.
“It pretty much took the kindness of people to solve this problem,” Benecchi said. “This is a perfect example of how when people care just a little bit, a lot can be accomplished.”