{"id":3474,"date":"2025-02-05T13:07:54","date_gmt":"2025-02-05T18:07:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pleasantvillepress.com\/?p=3474"},"modified":"2025-02-09T12:31:01","modified_gmt":"2025-02-09T17:31:01","slug":"could-a-baby-cow-be-roaming-pleasantville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pleasantvillepress.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/05\/could-a-baby-cow-be-roaming-pleasantville\/","title":{"rendered":"Could a baby cow be roaming Pleasantville?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pleasantville has lots of wildlife, from deer, to hawks, to groundhogs, and especially those turkeys who love to cross the road at the most inopportune times. But when you think of Pleasantville wildlife, a cow will most likely not be at the top of your list \u2013 until now. Pleasantville resident Noelle Nicolai saw what she believed to be a baby cow on Broadway January 17.<\/p>\n

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Pleasantville resident Noelle Nicolai. (Facebook)<\/p><\/div>\n

Nicolai said her family had been on their way to meet friends for dinner in Tarrytown, when she saw a mail truck stopped on the road with around 15 cars lined up behind it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe look, and along the fence line running from the [Pleasantville] Cottage School towards Lake Street is a white small animal, with [brown] spots all over it, with its head down, hauling ass to the stoplight,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Nicolai called the Pleasantville Police Department about it.<\/p>\n

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Broadway, near the entrance to the Pleasantville Cottage School. (Google Street View<\/a>)<\/p><\/div>\n

“We received the report, but the two officers who responded and canvassed the area did not find anything,” Police Chief Erik Grutzner said in an email.<\/p>\n

Nicolai also called friends who had been on Broadway around the same time. Nicolai said they saw several cars that had pulled over, but no cow.<\/p>\n

Nicolai figured someone had to have seen it, so she turned to 10570 411, a local Facebook group.<\/p>\n

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A screenshot of Nicolai’s post in the Facebook group 10570 411<\/a>, January 17, 2025.<\/p><\/div>\n

The post drew more than 100 responses, many of which included cow puns:<\/p>\n

“How fast was it mooo-ving?”<\/p>\n

“Sounds like udder nonsense!”<\/p>\n

“The Pleasantville Police are conducting a steakout.”<\/p>\n

But one person wrote she might have seen the same cow coming down Bear Ridge Road.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo she\u2019s coming down Bear Ridge into town, into the old village, and she sees three deer on the side of the road and they run in front of her, and she was like, ‘that last one was not a deer,’\u201d Nicolai paraphrased. \u201cIt was white with tan spots, did not look like a deer, but I can\u2019t imagine it was a cow.\u201d<\/p>\n

A couple other people replied to say that they had also seen an animal similar to that description. But could it have been a cow?<\/p>\n

Jacob Reiter is the manager of the Dyson College Nature Center<\/a> on Pace University’s Pleasantville campus, and an expert on local wildlife.<\/p>\n

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Pace University Nature Center Manager Jacob Reiter.
(LinkedIn<\/a>)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s really no animals, in New York State, wild animals, that get mistaken for cows,\u201d Reiter said. \u201cWhat it could be that vaguely resembles cows in size would be a white tailed deer.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the animal Nicolai and others saw could have been a leucistic white-tailed deer, which lack pigmentation and thus can appear white. But he thought that was unlikely.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhenever I hear of domestic animals or farm animals running around, my first thought is that it\u2019s an escapee from a farm,” Reiter said. “I\u2019ve been out and seen huge groups of ducks and geese, and then I\u2019ve seen a domestic goose mixed in there with them. And it probably just means that there\u2019s a farm somewhere where that domestic goose got out of and joined this flock of wild geese.”<\/p>\n

And when people in the Pleasantville area think of farms, the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture<\/a> often comes to mind. The renowned farm, education center, and partner restaurant is located in Pocantico Hills, not that close to Broadway. But would it be too far for a determined cow on the run?<\/p>\n

Fueling speculation about the cow was the fact that a fire had occurred at Stone Barns January 11<\/a>, just a few days before the spectacle Nicolai saw on Broadway.<\/p>\n

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Crews respond to a fire at Stone Barns January 11, 2025. (Pocantico Hills Fire Dept\/Facebook)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cStone Barns, on the Rockefeller Preserve, has pigs, cows, sheep, chickens, and goats,\u201d Nicolai said. “They keep all of that there for the restaurant. Is it possible that in the chaos of a fire, or whatever structures were damaged, that a baby cow got out?\u201d<\/p>\n

However, the fire was contained quickly and caused only minor damage. And Stone Barns spokesperson Anya Abrams provided this response to our emailed inquiry:<\/p>\n

“All of our cows are accounted for and our pastures are not adjacent to Pleasantville. It’s highly unlikely that a cow could travel from the Rockefeller Preserve to Pleasantville due to the distance and major roads involved.”<\/p>\n

So the mystery continues. Was it a cow? If so, where did it come from? Where was it going? Will it open a rival coffee shop<\/a>? Stay tuned.<\/p>\n