By now, fine reader, I assume you have heard that Buddy the Beefalo was captured after eight months on the run in Nowhere, Connecticut.
As regular readers well remember, Buddy is a 1,000 pound “highly-aggressive” buffalo-cow hybrid who escaped from a local slaughterhouse and successfully outmaneuvered the publicity-happy small-town police who talked a big game but couldn’t back it up.
Buddy captured hearts throughout the world selling merchandise, inspiring several very poorly executed Twitter parody accounts, and securing enough online donations to change his destination from the slaughterhouse to an animal sanctuary in the event he was finally caught.
What finally took Buddy down when the harsh New England winter and dogged determination of Nowhere’s finest could not?
Love.
Buddy was caught mid-coitous seducing a local farmer’s herd with his bad boy antics.
Fantastic reporting by the Register Citizen tells us that local middle school custodian and Sleepy Hollow Farm owner Ron Rice sounded the alarm that resulted in Buddy’s captivity.
After Rice’s 10-year-old grandson warned Pop Pop that, “a strange cow is in with us,” he saw the horns and responded with a puzzled, “We ain’t got nothing with horns.”
Later that day those horns nearly cost Ron Rice his life. His gripping first-hand account continues:
“The owner came over to my farm and we attempted to get him. We put the bull in a smaller corral, and he was able to lasso him,” Rice said. “We had Buddy, but things went sideways, and he snapped the rope.”
…
“I almost got killed. He slammed right into the gate to the trailer that I was holding. It happened so quick, I didn’t even have a chance to move and get out of the way,” said Rice, adding Buddy got loose and escaped.
Buddy’s reward was an extended stay at Sleepy Hollow Farm until he got calm enough to be tranquilized and hauled away.
During that period Farmer Rice says, “Buddy made himself at home.. We were feeding everybody like normal, and he was getting less apprehensive. He was happy, he had free food and had female companionship — he wasn’t going to nowhere.”
Except, of course, he was ‘going to somewhere’ because the long arm of the law reached in to disrupt Buddy’s newfound domestic tranquility.
He was tranquilized, sedated, and transported to Critter Creek Farm Sanctuary in Gainesville, Florida.
Critter Creek Farm Sanctuary sounds less like a peaceful resting place and more like a place that advertises Alligator Wrestling Wednesdays. If so, my money’s on Buddy.
As soon as Buddy the Beefalo arrived at the sanctuary, he escaped again.
Twice.
Once by jumping into a horse pasture and once by nearly trampling several employees, according to WTNH’s battle-hardened reporters.
Buddy’s newest captors are attempting to rebrand him more accurately as a “biso-cow,” since he’s technically a cross between a bison and a cow, not a buffalo and a cow, but it won’t stick.
Buddy’s brand isn’t about accuracy it’s about freedom.
When my children have grown to an old enough age where they’d be embarrassed to sleep in my bed when they’re scared, I will tell them the tale of Buddy the Beefalo, the renegade bovine who once roamed these very woods around us.
Buddy the Beefalo is an American tale as tall as Paul Bunyan with horns as sharp as Babe the Blue Ox. I’ve heard Buddy made it through the winter grazing on apples fallen from Johnny Appleseed’s trees.
How has Connecticut, the land of PT Barnum, Mark Twain, and World Wrestling Entertainment become so unimaginative that the same forces that stripped Buddy of his freedom have stripped us of our star?
Imagine if the sons of Punxsutawney, upon realizing the prognosticating powers of their beloved Phil had taken up a collection and sent him south where the sun always shines for him to better enjoy his shadow?
Udder nonsense.
Bring Buddy back!
Make him Grand Marshal of the Goshen Stampede. Pin a blue ribbon on him at the Durham Fair and build his Lego likeness at our Big E statehouse.
Sure, he’s an unhinged flight risk with a long list of near fatal encounters but let me pay $5 for a selfie with him and give the proceeds to a local charity.
We, the people, must take up Buddy’s charge.
Just as Scotsmen from Ness lifted up their dear Loch monster, and loggers from the Pacific Northwest fueled Bigfoot expeditions, we must pick up Buddy’s mantle for posterity.
Join me in making this solemn vow: the legend of Buddy the Beefalo must never die.
Indeed, given the lustful end to his time in Connecticut, one might speculate that at least one Beefalo sequel is in the works at Sleepy Hollow Farm.
Imagine an entire herd of freedom-loving beefalo combining the majesty of the American buffalo with the udder ambivalence of a simple cow.
Consider this: Buddy was captured on April 14, 2021. The average cow pregnancy lasts 283 days, which brings us to January 22, 2022. It has been preordained.
Buddy the Beefalo 2 coming 2 U on 1/22/22. Get ready.
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