He was udderly shocked!
A North Carolina man had to call Animal Control on Wednesday after finding an 800-pound cow in his family’s back-yard swimming pool.
Burt Thornburg, who owns the pool in Newton, about 40 miles northwest of Charlotte, spotted his guest when he looked out his window because he thought he’d heard something fall into the pool.
‘I come running out here and there was a set of horns up underneath the cover,’ Thornburg told WBTV.
‘I started grabbing the cover and ripping it off and uncovered a cow.’
A North Carolina man had to call Animal Control on Wednesday after finding an 800-pound cow in his family’s back-yard swimming pool
Animal control said they think the cow wandered in accidentally after taking a stroll down the road and not realizing the pool cover wasn’t solid ground
Catawba County Animal Control thinks the cow was in the pool for more than two hours, and ended up there after walking about a mile down the road and into the back yard.
Jenna Arsenault, the county’s Chief Animal Control Officer, told the Charlotte Observer that the agency got a 911 call around 10am to the home.
When they arrived, she said her team found the young female bovine staring at them from inside the pool, which was only partially fenced in.
And despite the chilly temperatures, Arsenault said it was even swimming around at one point.
‘There were no stairs for it to get out,’ she explained.
Her team thinks the cow got into the pool accidentally, and said it was lucky it didn’t drown.
‘It’s surrounded by landscaping and cows tend to graze, so we think she was crazing and walked across the pool cover, thinking it was solid.’ Arsenault explained.
And because there was no way out, once it fell into the water it was stuck there until a team of 10 animal-rescuers was able to get a lasso around its horns.
Burt Thornburg (left), who owns the pool, called 911 after finding the cow. Jenna Arsenault (right), the county’s chief Animal Control officer, said when they arrived they found the cow staring at them from inside the pool
And despite the chilly temperatures, Arsenault said it was even swimming around at one point. However she also said the animal was lucky not to have died
Because there was no way out, once it fell into the water it was stuck there until a team of 10 animal-rescuers was able to get a lasso around its horns and pull the animal out of the chilly water
Once they were able to get the animal’s two front legs stabilized on the concrete, she said everyone started pulling.
Eventually the cow was out and safe at home with its owner by 1pm.
‘In my seven years here, this is the first one we’ve gotten out of a pool, but we have had some unusual rescues,’ Arsenault said.
‘We’ve had them stuck in ditches, and we got one with its horns caught between two trees.’
Officials told WBTV that only after removing the cow from the pool did they realize it was a Heifer and not a bull. A Heifer means that the animal is still young and hasn’t been used to breed yet.