Officers help wrangle loose cow in East Bridgewater

EAST BRIDGEWATER, Mass. (WLNE) — It was an unusual assignment Wednesday for police in East Bridgewater — a cow on the loose.

Officers got a call around 9 a.m. notifying them that a woman was trying to corral a cow in the area of Belmont Street and Summer Street.

“Nothing really surprises me in these small towns,” East Bridgewater Police Officer Matthew Monteiro said. “So I got there and sure as heck I saw a woman riding a horse trying to corral a thousand pound cow.”

Police soon found the cow, Boots, who proved difficult to catch.

“I thought it would be a little bit quicker,” Monteiro said. “But an hour later we’re still chasing it from backyard to backyard, and Boots did not want to go home.”

Reinforcements arrived, including East Bridgewater Deputy Chief Mike McLaughlin, who formulated a plan.

“We were actually able to use ropes as come-alongs to get it up through the woods one rope at a time on a tree,” Mclaughlin said. “Because there’s no way you’re holding that thing back.”

Local farmers joined in an attempt to move Boots along.

“I turned around and put my hand up the nose and grabbed the tail and tried to walk it out and coax it up a little bit more,” Cindy Scott, a local farmer, said. “They’d pull the ropes and move it up a little bit more, until we could finally get it out of there.”

Boots’ owner said they had to pull out all the stops.

“We had buckets of grain, buckets of water, we tried pulling her nose,” farmer Wendy O’Brien said. “None of it really worked until we got the trailer and the tractor to inch her back.”

In the end, after several hours, Boots ended up safely in the trailer and back at the farm.

“She just wanted to go out for a nice stroll on a beautiful day like today,” Monteiro said. “So I don’t really blame her.”