Steaks alive!
The young bull that led police on a thrilling chase through Brooklyn streets and into Prospect Park will enjoy an early retirement in New Jersey thanks to a plant-eating former truck driver who operates a massive animal sanctuary there.
“He’ll have a great life here,” said Mike Stura, owner of the 232-acre Skylands Animal Sanctuary in Wantage, New Jersey.
The bovine, which Stura has named Shankar (meaning “one who brings happiness and prosperity”) led police on an hours-long chase down the Prospect Expressway and into Brooklyn’s Backyard, where he evaded their attempts to trap him using nearby soccer nets, before cops tranquilized, lassoed, and shipped him off to the city’s Center for Animal Care and Control.
Stura picked up the still-drowsy steer from the city at around 6:30 last night, and the animal rescuer hasn’t faced any trouble from the cow’s owner.
A slaughterhouse on Fourth Avenue near 16th Street called police on Tuesday to warn of the animal’s escape, but nobody from the business has claimed the beast, possibly due to liability concerns related to the steer’s escape, the sanctuary owner said.
“If the animal is feisty like that, it’s not worth the $1,500 in damage the animal might have caused,” Stura said.
At the sanctuary, veterinarians treated Shankar for a minor cut on his leg, in addition to performing tests to ensure his good health.
Until those test come back, the steer will remain in what amounts to bovine quarantine, after which he’ll join the sanctuary’s 39 other methane producers — including Freddie, who escaped a slaughterhouse in Queens last year — along with herds of sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, turkeys, ducks, and a goose named Ted.
