{"id":775760,"date":"2026-07-21T11:47:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T11:47:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/775760\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T11:47:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T11:47:15","slug":"emily-the-cow-escaped-a-slaughterhouse-for-40-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/775760\/","title":{"rendered":"Emily the cow escaped a slaughterhouse for 40 days"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Minutes before she was to be killed at a slaughterhouse in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, a three-year-old, 1,600-pound heifer named <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Emily_(cow)\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Emily<\/a> cleared the five-foot gate and ran. She stayed loose for 40 days through record snowfall in the winter of 1995, foraging in backyards and, at times, running with a herd of deer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Local people took her side, hiding her and feeding her, even as police were ordered to shoot her on sight. When she was finally caught she had lost 500 pounds. The slaughterhouse had priced her at $350, but a family named Randa bought her for a dollar and brought her to the Peace Abbey animal sanctuary on Christmas Eve.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Emily lived there another eight years as a symbol of animal rights and vegetarianism \u2014 she even served as a bridesmaid at a couple of weddings \u2014 until uterine cancer killed her in 2003. Her grave is marked by a life-sized bronze statue, set between figures of Mother Teresa and Gandhi.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Previously:<br \/>\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/boingboing.net\/2006\/01\/07\/heifer-hoofs-it-from.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Heifer hoofs it from meat plant, dodges SUV, train, murders 2,000<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Minutes before she was to be killed at a slaughterhouse in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, a three-year-old, 1,600-pound heifer named&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":775761,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[50829,3133,1147,2001,79,330817],"class_list":["post-775760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-1990s","tag-animal-rights","tag-animals","tag-massachusetts","tag-science","tag-vegetarianism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=775760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/775761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=775760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=775760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=775760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}