NOT READY TO ‘MEAT’ MAKER
Calf runs for its life on the Major Deegan
Holy cow!
Cops corralled a cow wandering down the Major Deegan Expressway on Tuesday.
Stunned motorists began calling 911 about the bold bovine when they spotted it trotting along the northbound side of the highway about 11:50 a.m.
More than a dozen NYPD cops managed to surround the hoofer and get it off the highway without injury. Rescuers quickly named him Major Deegan.
The calf, estimated to be about 8 months old, was brought to the Animal Care Centers of NYC facility in East Harlem. He likely escaped from a slaughterhouse.
“We don’t really know why, how — all of that kind of stuff,” Summer Dolder, senior manager of shelter operations, said of the cow’s mysterious back story.
“As the only open admissions shelter, when animals are found in the city that clearly don’t belong where they are, they’ll come here.”
Major Deegan only spent about 20 minutes before moving on to Skylands Sanctuary in Wantage, N.J.
“With more exotic species, not a cat or dog or rabbit, we really do try to make sure that we minimize the amount of time they’re here,” Dolder said. “We do the best we can to make him comfortable and as stressfree as possible, but the best scenario is for him to move along to appropriate space,”
“He looked healthy,” she added. “Definitely had a lot of energy, was feeling pretty feisty.”
“(He’s) gonna be on 232 acres and have a nice life,” Mike Stura of Skylands Sanctuary told ABC News. “This is a good ending, a happy ending, so it’s as good as it gets.”
The cow’s sprint to freedom came on the heels of two other high-profile rescues of escaped animals in recent days.
On Sunday cops saved a goat roaming near E. 132nd St. and Locust Ave., a block from the East River shoreline in the Bronx. And last Wednesday, authorities rescued a lamb sprinting down the Gowanus Expressway in Brooklyn. Those animals ended up at sanctuaries as well.