How a runaway steer escaped Newark Penn Station and changed his destiny
Mike Stura was sifting through his mail when the phone rang.
“There’s a bull running down the railroad tracks in Newark,” his friend said, urging him to scan the videos multiplying on social media.
Sure enough, the footage showed a reddish brown Texas Longhorn trotting down Track 2 at Newark Penn Station. Minutes into his escape last Thursday morning, the steer jamming up America’s third-busiest transit system was already galloping to internet fame.
“On my way,” Stura replied.
The retired trucker, 57, laced up his boots and hooked a livestock trailer to the back of his Ram pickup. Nine years into running a New Jersey animal sanctuary, Stura knew he needed to get there quickly. Newark was full of slaughterhouses, and the errant bovine was probably freaking out - maybe even injured.
He fired up the truck and dialed the Newark police, whose officers had rushed past startled commuters with tranquilizers and rope.
“Where is the animal now?”
The animal was capturing loads of attention on X, the website formerly known as Twitter, cementing his place in the Parthenon of viral critters who managed to flee captivity.
When a chihuahua sprints down a New York expressway, when a pair of llamas scamper through an Arizona neighborhood, when a cow leaps from a slaughterhouse-bound truck on New Jersey’s Route 80, carnivores and vegans alike tend to root for the furry rebels, devouring updates while the chase is on. (No fewer than six reporters contributed to The Washington Post’s “comprehensive llama report” back in 2015.)
And for a brief window last week, our divided nation rallied behind what became known as the NJ Transit Bull (even though, technically, he’s a steer). Millions viewed videos of his bolt to freedom.
Neither the police nor the rail authorities would say how he got there.
“Steer clear of the closing doors please,” someone posted on X.
“Oh holy cow,” someone else added.
On the tracks, the longhorn looked lost, confused and out of place. Plenty of Americans could relate to that predicament, thought David Wilder, a psychology professor at Rutgers University.
“Many of us identify with the underdog,” remarked Wilder, who caught the dash on the news.
That loose steer, he said, also flicked at something universal.
“It runs through all civilizations - the myth of the hero, the epic,” the professor said. “An individual leaves home, must overcome challenges and in the process is transformed.”
Photos showed officers trailing the longhorn up and down the platform. Commuters stepped back and stuck their phones out, broadcasting chaos that one observer likened to Wile E. Coyote’s doomed flailing at the Roadrunner.
Ellie Vandenberg, a 31-year-old literary scout, was alarmed when the uniformed men blurred by. What were they chasing? Was that … horns?
Her first thought: “Am I hallucinating?”
Her second: “How am I going to get to work?”
Her third: “Yeah, I’m rooting for the bull.”
This wasn’t Stura’s first rodeo.
The cow that leaped from the truck on Route 80 in 2018? He had scrambled to her aid and named her Brianna after a police officer - Brian - who’d helped him corral the black-and-white spotted fugitive.
That was always his first step, connecting with the police. He had developed those relationships across New Jersey over the past decade and discovered that authorities are often grateful to know a guy with a beast-proof trailer.
Usually the slaughterhouses opted against claiming escapees. If an animal hurts anyone or destroys property, those operations could be held liable. Sedated steers can’t be turned into steak anyway.
Stura hadn’t eaten a bite of meat since 1995 when his love for animals eclipsed his appetite. After a vegan activist taught him about what cows endure on dairy farms, he devoted his life to sheltering runaway or abandoned livestock.
Hundreds, including Brianna, live on his property in rural Sussex County, the Skylands Animal Sanctuary and Rescue. (There’s also one peacock, an exotic pet that grew too pecky for its former owner.)
By the time he reached Newark Penn Station, the longhorn had hoofed his way out of the tracks and into a fenced lot near a meat wholesaler. Police knocked out the creature with a tranquilizer dart, hogtied his legs and hauled him into the back of a trailer.
One officer, Ricardo, led Stura to the sleeping steer. And so, at the climax of this epic, the NJ Transit Bull, having overcome his challenges, became Ricardo.
That evening, Ricardo’s fans got an update.
“You’re good, buddy,” Stura tells the longhorn, freshly awake, in a video he uploaded to Facebook. “You’re safe now.”
Ricardo’s reddish brown ears twitch. He’s laying in his own enclosure with a steer’s version of bedhead: a crown of hay between his horns. A veterinarian declared him healthy, if small for his breed, before administering a round of vaccines.
“Nobody’s going to mess with you anymore,” Stura tells him.
Admirers have shown up to try to meet him - though, for now, the sanctuary isn’t accepting visitors - saying Ricardo has inspired them. New Jersey Transit, meanwhile, is selling plush Ricardo toys for $20, pledging a portion of the profit to the sanctuary.
“So happy this had a beautiful ending,” someone commented under the Facebook video.
“Ricardo is a fine looking young man!!” someone else wrote. “He also has very soulful eyes.”
Soon, after more rest, he’ll join the rest of the herd. For Christmas dinner, they’re eating apples.