NYPD police officers capture a cow in Jamaica, Queens, after it got loose from a nearby slaughter house Wednesday. DelMundo for News
A wily cow turned the streets of Queens into a wild west scene Wednesday when it broke out of a Halal slaughterhouse and had to be lassoed by cops.
The fleet-footed hoofer made a break from Musa Halal Inc. on Beaver Road, darting through traffic in a desperate attempt to avoid becoming barbecue.
The bolting bovine, weighing up to 500 pounds, charged up 109th Ave. in South Jamaica just after 1 p.m. with cops and a butcher in hot pursuit.
Pedestrians and motorists did disbelief double takes, screaming and running as the rampaging livestock rambled through the asphalt jungle.
"I saw this cow running up the street with the police chasing him," said retired bus company owner William Barksdale, 72, of Queens. "I knew the police would eventually win, but he had good spunk."
The break-away beef cut up the driveway of Steven Khan's house on 109th Ave., startling him and his buddies as they were discussing the NBA playoffs in his garage.
"We were chilling. I was coming back, taking out the garbage when I saw my friends running," said Kahn, 20. "I'm like, 'Why are you running?'"
Then Kahn saw the snorting heifer busting through his backyard gate.
"I ran in the house carrying garbage," he said. "I'm not scared, but it's a wild cow coming in my yard. It's not the kind of thing you see in South Jamaica."
Khan's pal Imran Asif, 23, said he jumped on the hood of parked truck to avoid being trampled by the stampeding beast.
"When it passed by, I didn't want it to break my knees and my knees caps," Asif said.
Cops cornered the dark-brown moo-moo in Kahn's yard, shooting it with a tranquilizer gun and lassoing it with ropes.
A butcher from the slaughterhouse tried to help subdue the woozy cow but nearly got head butted.
Stumbling and struggling not to go back to the slaughterhouse, the top sirloin rammed his head into a police horse trailer bought to the scene.
At least a dozen cops teamed up to get the cow into the trailer, witnesses said. It was taken to the city Animal Care and Control facility in Brooklyn.
"It was bugging," barber Paul Echols, 23, said of the rawhide escapee. "I was worried. I'm not used to seeing stuff like that."
The gallivanting hay-eater's Houdini attempt apparently paid off. City officials said the animal will not have to go back to the slaughterhouse.
"We will find it a home," said Richard Gentles of the city Animal Care and Control. "We're starting to reach out to farm sanctuaries."
