As Iowans debate what “New York values” are, Queens has spent the week chasing down runaway livestock. On Monday night, officers of the 103rd Precinct were charged with tracking down a goat that had escaped a local slaughterhouse, and yesterday they wrangled a cow that had run away from a different slaughterhouse in the same area. Until today, the animals’ fates were up in the air (and not looking so good), but we can now definitively bring you the news that both cow and goat will live out their lives without fear of the ax.
According to DNAinfo, Sergeant Mary Humburg and officers Anthony Fernandez and Danny Gasperetti, who tracked down the goat, couldn’t bear to bring it back to the slaughterhouse it had run away from. “He was just a baby,” Humburg said. “How could I let it get killed?” Instead, she and the officers bought the animal for $40 and named him Merrick after the street where they’d grabbed him. On Thursday morning Merrick moved to an animal sanctuary in Suffolk County where Humburg says “he’ll have a happy life.”
As for the cow, until this morning his fate looked grim. An employee of Archer Halal Live Poultry said he was slated to be killed today, escape or no. But Gothamist reports that an animal-rights advocate named Mike Stura, an employee of Skylands Animal Sanctuary and Rescue, heard about the escapee and visited the slaughterhouse, making a bid of his own and taking the steer (now named Freddie) to the vet for a checkup.
