Quincy News: Littleton Bull mourned by area residents and owner

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Quietly cruising and chilling in the shade
A Michelle Clements image
– News from elsewhere covered by Quincy Quarry News with commentary added.

Littleton Bull mourned by area residents and its owner.

After being on the loose for nearly a week, the Littleton Bull met his demise when he was repeatedly shot and so brutally killed Sunday evening in Littleton.

Another children’s favorite
A Walt Disney image
Needless to say, area residents were horrified by what many view as a senseless slaughter of a gentle giant.

In particular, the Littleton Bull was especially popular with children.

Tragically for them, local officials have made no announcement of the providing to them access to grief counselors to help process this traumatic loss.

@LittletonBull – we are sending out a decoy in Ayer to distract the wranglers pic.twitter.com/vGINfMjAiN
— Kristin Bullwinkel (@kbullwinkel) August 18, 2017

Littleton police said in a statement the decision to shoot it “did not come lightly” and was done to ensure the safety of motorists driving on Great Road, a thoroughfare also known as Route 119.

A Littleton police sergeant was noted as locating the bull behind 25 Ernie’s Drive in Littleton, roughly three hundred feet away from the Great Road.

Farmers Livestock Auction Market Exchange
A John Walker/Wicked Local image
The site of the killing was also only a few hundred yards away from the livestock auction yard from which the Littleton Bull escaped days earlier – and thus leading one to wonder if the bull was perhaps endeavoring to return to the barn.

A spokesman for both the Littleton Police Department and Ayer Police Chief William A. Murray, however, declined to comment further on the bull’s brutal death.

Following the bull
A Barry Chin/Boston Globe image
The bull’s owner said he tracked the bull’s movements for five days.

He added that he was frustrated with the Massachusetts Environmental Police as he had asked that they tranquilize the bull on Wednesday, only to be told that they could not do so.

If the bull had been tranquilized, his owner said that “this animal could have been on the trailer Wednesday.”

Demurs offered notwithstanding, it is possible to tranquilize and so capture a bull.

For example, last year tranquilizer darts were used to capture a bull that had gotten loose in far more thickly settled Queens New York.

Frank, the lucky bull
A Farm Sanctuary photo
That bull, named Frank after Frank Lee Morris – an inmate who purportedly may have successfully escaped from Alcatraz in 1962, ended up escorted by comedian Jon Stewart to the safety of an animal sanctuary.

Additionally, two nonprofits that operate shelters for farm animals had offered to transport and care for the Littleton Bull if it was caught.

Further, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) had offered to buy the bull so that could life out his life in sanctuary.

Unfortunately, such was not to be.

The now late bull’s owner added that he purchased the bull at auction so it could be sacrificed for an upcoming Muslim holiday.

This, in turn, has given rise to sinister conspiracy theories in the Quincy Quarry newsroom.

A bunch of clowns
a dippedmoon42.blogspot.com image
The bull’s owner also noted that he had lost “over a couple of thousand dollars,” as well as incurred additional costs for fuel and hired help, not to mention suffering the aggravation and stress of searching for the bull for five days, a process that, in his words, was “a total and complete circus.”

A nearby resident who first saw the bull near her house last Wednesday said that she was “devastated” when she heard the tragic news.

Her home is set in the woods and is thus used to seeing wildlife around her property – porcupine, wild turkeys, deer, and even bear – but nothing prepared her for seeing the bull strolling through her backyard.

“The thing that surprised me is that he was so big,” she said.

He knew …
Image via Patch
(At the same time, ed.), “(h)e wasn’t aggressive at all. He was docile, just kind of sauntering through the yard.”

As the hours passed, however, she could hear the bull making angry-sounding mooing noises. He sounded “very forlorn.”

“This bull, he knew what was going on.”