Storming around in Philadelphia

STORMY wasn’t cowed in the slightest.

You see, Stormy was a proud cow and wanted to be away from the manger and so she made an amble for it.

Twice!

The great escape took place on Thursday morning from a local Philadelphia church’s live Nativity scene. Taken literally from the Bible, the scene depicts the birth of Jesus Christ.

The seven-year-old brown and white Hereford was back sullenly munching hay at Old First Reformed Church of Christ by 7:15am after two sets of adventures on snowy downtown streets.

Stormy wanted out of the Nativity scene because it held no truck with organised religion. She was neither a holy cow nor a saint-- ly steer. Instead, she was an agnostic animal which wanted proof of God’s existence. And who was Satan anyway if not a scarecrow in a religious cornfield? You could see that we had a thinking beast out there. Stormy conceded the merits of reincarnation, however, and secretly thought she might have been a Punjabi in her past life as organised religion made her Sikh. “It’s all a load of bull,” she grumbled to anyone who would listen but nobody did and, lo and behold, was cast in the church’s annual Christmas pageant. Cows are ruminants which is to say they ruminated a lot and Stormy was no exception. She often brooded long and hard about the bitter hand fate had dished out to her. The farmer either milked you dry or contemplated you for steak. That was why cows had no sense of humour: you wouldn’t want to be a laughing stock either.

Suddenly, she longed for Japanese citizenship because they gave you a fair shake before rendering you into steak. A cow was treated decently there: you had beer and massages and a better sounding name like Wagyu.

In her next life, she decided, she would come back as a pea because she knew that the only difference between roast beef and pea soup was that anyone could roast beef.

It was with these ruminations in mind that she made her escape.

Police first got reports of a cow near an Interstate 95 on-ramp around 2am Thursday.

One of the state police troopers who responded had a cattle ranch in New Jersey and knew how to handle the situation.

Officers put a rope on the cow and walked her to a nearby parking lot. Some lanes of the highway had to be shut down as the cow was wrangled.

But the reluctant thespian had other ideas and it was still not calm and bright. She fled again around 6am, despite Rev Michael Caine’s best efforts to stop the 680kg animal. The good Reverend had a ready defence. “She was a lot of steak,” he explained.

Stormy then ambled toward a major thoroughfare as the morning rush got underway and the rush became a crawl.

“If you’re in the area of 4th and Market, beware of traffic delays. A cow is loose. Again. No, we can’t believe we are tweeting this either,” the police department tweeted just before 7am.

Alas, poor Stormy. The reluctant performer has since been sacked for blasphemy with the church deciding to use her understudy, a cow about half her size named Ginger.

As for Stormy, her owner said she had never been a troublemaker before

“She’s a very calm cow,” he said. “Nothing really fazes her.”

Except religion and the unfairness of life.