Poland milks the story of its improbable hero: A cow

Farm animal goes to great lengths to attain her freedom

A farmer in Poland — identified only as “Mr. Lukasz,” according to the BBC — told his workers to tranquilize a cow before they loaded her into the truck.

But the workers didn’t listen; they assumed the cow would comply.

She did not comply. She ran.

The cow smashed through a metal fence, the BBC wrote, broke a worker’s arm and ribs, and bounded across the farm to the tree line.

She emerged from the trees at the shore of a lake, with the workers close behind her and nowhere to run.

So the cow swam, straight into the lake, toward a cluster of islands.

Before Lukasz lost sight of her, he reportedly told the TV news program Wiadomosci, he saw that cow dive underwater.

The islands of Lake Nysa are tiny.

There were no corn cobs for the cow to graze on there, and apparently not much to eat.

But there was freedom, so when farmworkers made their way to one of those islands, they found the cow at home among thin trees, with no intention to return.

Lukasz tried for days to get the cow back.

The farmer called the fire brigade, Sky News reported, but when the cow saw their boat coming, she just jumped into the water and swam to the next island.

The farmer wanted to tranquilize her, the BBC wrote, but the veterinarian was out of gas ammunition.

Lukasz considered just shooting the cow, but she was worth 5,000 zlotys, or about $1,500, The Associated Press reported.

So he had no choice. According to Sky News, Lukasz stopped trying to catch the cow and began leaving food for her on the island, in hopes that he would one day get her back.

It was during this time that she was given her name, Hero Cow, by admirers across Poland.

That’s how Hero Cow lived — however she pleased, for nearly four weeks.

“She fled heroically,” Pawel Kukiz wrote in a viral Facebook post on Feb. 16. “If all citizens” had such determination as this cow, he said, the country would surely prosper.

Kukiz, a local politician, thought the cow should be rewarded for her courage.

He rallied Poles to spare Hero Cow from the butcher.

Finally, the AP wrote, a local governor offered the cow sanctuary on his farm.

So last week, a veterinarian and four rescuers sailed to the island with tranquilizer darts ready — to save her.

And that’s how they killed her.

The workers pursued the cow through the foliage for hours, the AP wrote.

They had to give her three shots of sedative before she went down.

Then they got her to shore and into a truck, which she would not leave alive.

The rescuers said it was probably the stress of her capture that killed her, according to the AP.