It’s not every day you see a cow running around on Avenue L, but that was the unusual scene near East 96th Street on Tuesday, March 21st when a young black calf, about 4 months old, managed to escape from a van belonging to a local slaughterhouse.
Workers from the slaughterhouse, along with a couple of “cowboys” from Original Pizza, helped round up the runaway cow, who put up a good fight, possibly sensing its fate.
“The people from the slaughterhouse were trying to lasso it and get it into the truck, but she was feisty. She didn’t want to go,” Vinny Fontana, owner of Original Pizza, said. Workers from the Canarsie pizzeria managed to capture footage of the exciting “roundup.”
The cow was returned to Saba Live Poultry on Rockaway Avenue and later to the farm in Pennsylvania where she came from. News spread of her capture on all the major news networks that evening, disappointing some animal rights activists like Mike Stura, founder of the Skylands Animal Sanctuary in New Jersey. When he caught wind of the cow tale, he started negotiations with the farm owner and the slaughterhouse.
Both parties had a change of heart, and the calf has moved on to greener pastures at her new home at the Skylands Sanctuary where she’ll spend her days roaming free and frolicking with other rescued animals. In the words of Bart Simpson, “Cowabunga!”
Photo courtesy of Original Pizza