Wild, Wild East: Calf Stampedes In Bronx

It wasn’t exactly the last roundup, and the men with the lariats weren’t wearing Stetsons. But a bit of the Wild West came to the northern Bronx Wednesday when a calf escaped from a truck and began a one-steer stampede down Ely Avenue in Baychester.

The calf was being unloaded at Ely Live Poultry Market shortly after 10 a.m. when it broke free and ran across four lanes of traffic, said a police spokeswoman, Officer Sonia Quendo. The owner of the 6-month-old calf chased it into a back yard of a home and tried to corral it, but the animal ran into another backyard.

By then, four officers from an emergency services unit had responded. Calf-roping is not on the Police Academy’s training syllabus, but the officers succeeded in lassoing the frightened calf.

“I happened to be sitting on my steps and I heard a woman hollering,” said a witness, Michael Tyler, 50, a truck driver for Coca-Cola who lives down the block from the market.

“I got up and walked down and I saw these cops roping a calf.”

“When they first saw the calf, they tried to stop it from going in the street so it wouldn’t get hit by a car,” Tyler said. “They put ropes around its legs and neck. They were very gentle with it.”

Laughing, he added, “But they weren’t cowboys, that’s for sure.”

The police called state and federal agriculture authorities, who notified the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals after finding three ewes and a ram in cramped conditions in the market.

The market owner was issued a summons, which carries a maximum fine of a year in prison and a $1,000 fine.

The owner’s identity was not available.

The five animals were taken to Green Chimneys, a farm in Brewster, N.Y.