Creature Comfort

There are plenty of Detroiters who remember how their jaws dropped one day just before Christmas, at the sight of a giant red-and-white Hereford steer running down Jefferson Avenue in broad daylight, gloriously free. He had good reason to run.

By Jack Lessenberry

Jefferson the steer, who escaped the slaughterhouse, enjoys his supper.

David Lewinski

Jefferson, as he came to be named, was going to be killed. He was being taken to a slaughterhouse in Detroit, where he would have met a frightening and painful end, just as thousands and thousands of cattle do every month. Yet he had managed to break free, and ran for more than a mile, careening down city streets, calling forth news crews, exciting reporters and residents.
Eventually, they got him, of course, with the help of a tranquilizer dart. Normally, he would have just been led back to the slaughter. But he was now a celebrity, and we don’t kill celebrities.
Well, not bovine ones, anyway. To his owner, he was no more than $1,500 worth of meat. To animal-rights activists, he was a living being. They sent in donations and paid his ransom. But now what? Where was he to go?
“Well, there was only one place,” says Jennifer Sullivan, a 33-year-old writer, rock ’n’ roll drummer, and supporter of animals.
“Sasha Farm.”

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