It’s not hard to imagine a criminal being on the lam for a couple of years. But a cow?
After two years on the run, a Polish cow named Matylda has at last been returned to her barn near the Czech border, according to TVN, a CNN affiliate in Poland.
Matylda took off shortly after she was bought by new owners. According to TVN, Matylda broke the weak chain that was tethering her and wandered away. Apparently unfamiliar with her new surroundings, she was lost and unable to find her way back to her new barn.
Some neighbors did see her every once in a while, but when they tried to approach her, she ran — fast.
“We tried to catch her many times,” Stanislaw Dzik, a farmer, told TVN. “She was in great shape, in great condition. I think the cow weighed around 700 kilograms (about 1,500 lbs). And she was running away like a wild deer.”
Although, on the other hand, Dzik admitted that he sometimes chased the cow away because she was feeding on his land.
Finally, after two years, Matylda fell for the old hey-I’ve-got-some-fruit-for-you ruse. The new owner, Leszek Zasada, gained the cow’s trust that way last Saturday.
And the jig was up.
No word on why it took the owner two years to think of offering the cow some fruit.
But Matylda is back in the barn — this time, presumably, attached to a stronger chain.