Vegans Honor 'Courage' The Bull, Chased To Death By NYPD, At Emotional Vigil

JAMAICA, QUEENS — A few dozen vegan activists gathered outside the Aziz Slaughterhouse at 157th and Beaver late Wednesday night to remember a New York City hero: the now-famous black bull who escaped from said slaughterhouse the morning prior, only to die from what was likely exhaustion or over-tranquilization (or a combination of both) after a wild, hours-long police chase watched online by thousands of New Yorkers in real time.

"Anyone who was watching him — covered in feces, running for his life — they already agree with veganism," vigil organizer and Hell's Kitchen resident Jill Carnegie, who runs the group Vegans of New York, said in an interview with Patch.

"This is a moment where we can make sure his death wasn't in vain," she said.

“I felt so connected to him," co-organizer Heather Greenhouse told the New York Daily News at the vigil. "I felt like I was watching my own brother or someone I loved running for their life, and it was heartbreaking.”

Vigil attendees lined up tiny candles on the sidewalk outside the slaughterhouse in memory of the bull, whom they named Courage, and held up homemade posters showing images of his final moments on Earth.

"SOMEONE, NOT SOMETHING," one poster said. "Injustice everywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," another said. And a third: "He ran for his life... just like you would."

The mood at Courage's makeshift memorial Wednesday night was decidedly "somber, yet motivated," Carnegie said. "It was a peaceful way to get our message out while coming together to help each other cope."

Activists said they hoped Courage's widely followed plight would call attention to the 10 billion other land animals they said are killed each year for meat — including many right here in NYC.

"Even people born and raised here" aren't aware of the city's slaughterhouses, Carnegie said. So one condemned bull's daring escape — live, aerial footage of which went viral in NYC and beyond — "let people know this is happening in our own backyard," she said.

For more than two hours Tuesday morning, the city watched, transfixed, as Courage loped through the streets of Jamaica, dodging vehicles and pedestrians, slobber streaming from his mouth and six NYPD tranquilizer darts sticking from his side.

He wasn't the first of his kind to escape the cleaver in Queens: Within the past year or so, two other bulls and a goat have also gotten loose.

Courage was, however, the first to die.

City officials have yet to release the bull's cause of death — and probably never will, seeing as they cremated him on the same day he died, according to Mike Stura, a 50-year-old animal rescuer from New Jersey who was on his way to pick up Courage when he got the bad news.

Stura runs the Skyland Animal Sanctuary & Rescue farm in Wantage, N.J. — the same farm that adopted Freddie, another bull who escaped another Jamaica slaughterhouse last year.

"People start calling me as soon as there's a bull or a cow loose," Stura said. "It's nonstop, because I guess I'm, like, 'the cow guy.' I can't tell you how many calls I got — all kinds of people."

Asked why he thought Courage died, the animal rescuer speculated: "It could be the running, the nonstop running. ... And I'm sure being shot six times by tranquilizers didn't help him."

"Freddie was cornered in a parking garage, so it made him easier to wrangle up," Stura said.

Another local character who has since gotten involved is 58-year-old Jamaica resident Joe Moretti, the indignant neighborhood blogger behind the Cleanup Jamaica Queens Now Wordpress.

"Maybe it would have been comical if the bull had actually lived, but that wasn't the case," Moretti said by phone Thursday.

Moretti is calling on city officials to shut down Jamaica's urban slaughterhouses.

"From the outside, these places look disgusting," the local blogger said. "They stink — during the summer it's even worse. And they're obviously really poorly managed, because animals are getting loose."

"When you have a large animal like a bull in the middle of a shopping district where people live, and where there's a lot of traffic, that's a big safety issue," Moretti said. "It's not acceptable, it's not civilized, and something needs to be done about it."

Yet in the aftermath of Courage's dramatic escape, he said, "No elected officials have said anything. I haven't heard a peep out of one official, nor the community board."

While the vegans and blight fighters of New York City rally to make Courage's death count for something, Stura, the animal rescuer from New Jersey, is inviting traumatized New Yorkers to spend this coming weekend getting to know Freddie and dozens of other slaughterhouse rescues living out their days in peace on his rural farm.

"So many people seem upset by this," Stura said. "So I'm going to let them come see some animals that had a better ending."

Images courtesy of Jill Carnegie