No, it’s not the purple dinosaur. A dark-coated bull, nicknamed ‘Barney’, has escaped on Long Island and eluded capture for several days. This is despite the effort thrown in by different rescue teams, from employing a helicopter to using night-vision equipment to attempting to lure the animal with grain and a cow-- none of them worked. Residents have spotted bull walking across fields, roads, and suburban front yards, and the bull was also able to shut down a portion of Sunrise Highway:
“We’ve tried luring him with a cow, with horses,” Frankie Floridia of Strong Island Animal Rescue told Newsday. “I’m out here with a (tranquilizer gun), looking for him, and I’m thinking, ‘I’m hunting cows in an Indiana Jones movie.’ It’s just frustrating. The longer it goes, you wonder what happens.”
The bull is roaming around a part of Long Island that features dense underbrush and pine barrens. Floridia said the dense vegetation has hindered the search.
Rescuers said they hope to have the bull moved to a sanctuary.
“I’m not afraid of him being aggressive to humans,” Floridia said. “He doesn’t have horns, he’s not an aggressive animal. I think he’s going to see people and he’s going to run away. I’m just afraid, with the color of his coat, he’s going to wander into a road in the dark and some driver won’t see him.”
Image credit: Suffolk County Police Department via AP)