Moos from a Manhole

All night long, low desolate sounds were heard in Newark, N.J. The sounds brought a vague disquiet to the hearts of young people returning from the movies, to milkmen beginning their rounds. Here & there a suburban householder, coming home late, could have sworn that he heard under his very feet the melancholy, muffled moo of a cow.

It was a cow all right. She was a 1,300-Ib. Holstein, a runaway from a herd of 28 unloaded that day from Wisconsin. Heading back toward the farm, she had wandered along a creek bed which leads into the labyrinth of sewers under the city.

Newark people did what city dwellers always do when faced with the inexplicable: they called the police. The police department had no map of Newark's sewer system. A sergeant and six patrolmen entered the sewer, carrying ropes, flashlights, a portable telephone, a Tommy gun. Under East Orange, four miles away, they were driven back by sewer gas. Next morning, twelve hours after the cow was last seen, two sewer employes heard moos coming from a manhole, climbed 20 feet underground, and there she was. Waving flashlights, crying "So boss," they backed the baffled animal through the echoing pipes, eventually got her turned around, past the Newark line, and out into the open air. All told, the cow had covered some twelve miles of cloacal New Jersey.

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