French Cow Gets Happy Ending After Daring Slaughterhouse Escape

Even meat-eaters love to root for the underdog when a plucky cow escapes from a slaughterhouse and goes on the run, but those stories don't tend to have very happy endings. It's not that hard to hunt a cow, after all. One daring escapee bucked that trend this summer when she shook off her captors and made a break for it, and now her story has drawn out so many supporters that she gets to live.

According to The Local, the cow was in an abattoir and scheduled for slaughter in southeastern France on June 30 when she broke free from her handlers, went on a rampage throughout the building, and burst out a door to freedom. She managed to escape to a grassy area outside before a tracker caught her with a tranquilizer dart and re-captured her. That was a lucky turn of events for the cow, though, because once she'd had a dose of tranquilizer her meat was legally considered unfit for human consumption, so she got a stay of execution until the drug left her system.

In that time, however, her story went viral. The Internet dubbed her "Cornette, the cow that refused to die." Internet fans gathered 2,000 euros, or about $2,200, to buy the cow from her owners and have her transported to a farm outside Paris where city children are taught about farming. Cornette is now pregnant and will live out her life, together with her calf, at a sunny farm teaching schoolchildren about animals, which is basically the happiest ending a person can imagine for a cow.