You gotta be kidding!
More than 20 goats escaped from a truck headed to a Brooklyn slaughterhouse Tuesday when the driver pulled over for a nap — and it’s the third time a herd has broken free in less than two weeks, sources said.
The animals had been doomed for the dinner plate when they busted out of trailer attached to a pickup truck near the live-slaughter halal market Vivero Primos in Bushwick at around 4 a.m., the owner and witnesses said.
“I saw the driver this morning and he didn’t say anything to me. Stupid guy,” said Ali Saeed, who owns the market on Wyckoff Avenue and Hancock Street. “I don’t know why he would come here at four in the morning when we open at eight.”
The brave Billys got a taste of freedom — hoofing to a nearby bus stop and chowing down on grass — before a neighbor woke up the driver and helped wrangle the goats.
“A neighbor came over and said to me, ‘I caught your goats.’ I thought he was joking. I said, ‘All right thank you.’ He said, “I’d like a free chicken,” said Saeed. “Now I’ll have to give him one.”
The animal world jailbreak comes less than a week after 75 sheep and goats escaped from a livestock auction in Hackettstown, New Jersey. And on Aug. 3, 100 goats broke free from a truck renting the animals for a lawn service in Boise, Idaho.
Bushwick neighbor Melvin Benton, 58, was leaving his apartment when he spotted the goats in the middle of the street — as cars swerved around them. He tried to wake up the truck driver, who had brought the animals from a farm in Iowa.
“The street [was] covered in goats. The driver was knocked out asleep. I was banging on the window but he wasn’t waking up. The goats were across the street from their trailer,” he said, adding he rushed to help round them up. “I called the police…They got him up.”
Ciaran Flanagan, a 33-year-old bartender who snapped a shot of the goats, said, “The guy was shouting, ’Yo, the goats got out!’”
“I’m from Ireland, so I’m used to goats roaming the roads. I didn’t expect to see it here,” Flanagan said.
The goats were safely rounded up before 8 a.m., witnesses said.
But Brooklyn neighbors were stunned to see the critters in the urban jungle.
Lorraine Fields, 56, who lives next door to the slaughterhouse said, “It was terrible! I thought, Oh my god, get the goats!”
Tony Castro, the landlord of a building next door, said the shop has been in the neighborhood for the last decade.
“I don’t know how they allow goats to be slaughtered in the city,” Castro said, noting that the shop is “smelly.”
Animal rights advocate Chris Allieri pointed to the “cruelty” associated with live poultry markets and slaughterhouses, which are scattered around the Big Apple.
“[T]here’s likely no happy ending for these animals,” Allieri said.
Saeed didn’t provide the name of the driver or his firm.
Additional reporting by Natalie O’Neill