Jon Stewart Gives Steer A New Lease On Life After Escape In Queens

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- No, it's not an April Fool's joke.

For the second time this year, a bovine busted loose from a slaughterhouse and got a brief taste of freedom before being wrangled by cops in Queens.

Now the steer has been given a new lease on life by comedian Jon Stewart.

The steer was being taken off a truck when it escaped near 160th Street and Liberty Avenue in Jamaica around 10:18 a.m. Friday, the NYPD told 1010 WINS.

The steer was originally described as a cow, but Animal Cares of NYC later said the animal was male.

As CBS2's Raegan Medgie reported, the steer was eventually wrangled, but not before it attracted a curious crowd.

"As we turned the corner, one kid yelled out 'cow' I'm thinking it was an April Fool's joke, and low and behold, it was a cow," Tyrone Sellers said.

It was Sellers' first time chaperoning students on a tour of York College in Jamaica. He wasn't expecting the steer to be the most memorable part of the visit.

"I don't want anything to happen to these kids on my trip. My first trip," he said.

Social media went wild with photos and videos of the steer romping around CUNY's York College campus.

"It ran in here, started running around the grass and started eating some grass," one witness said.

"It's not the first time it happened over here," another witness said, adding the bull was "trying to get away, trying to get out of here. It didn't want to be eaten."

A video posted to Facebook appears to show the steer charging at and knocking a person down to the ground.

The cow was corralled and taken to an Animal Care & Control facility in Brooklyn, where staff named the animal Frank Lee.

The shelter wrote on its Facebook page that the steer will be safely transferred to a great location. CBS2 learned that Stewart and his wife picked up the steer and will take it to their farm sanctuary in Watkins Glen.

In January, a bovine also bolted from a Jamaica slaughterhouse. That cow is living out the rest of its life at New Jersey's Skylands Animal Sanctuary And Rescue following its daring escape.

It is unclear if the steer in Friday's incident escaped from the same slaughterhouse.