Middletown woman recounts discovery of missing cow leading to its rescue

A cow is in a much happier place after being rescued earlier this week following an escape from a Middletown farm a couple of months ago.

This rescue was made possible thanks to a woman who spotted the missing livestock.

“Not in a million years. It was a very crazy, random thing," Chelsea Brookes said.

Brookes was walking along a stream in Middletown Saturday while doing yard work. It was then she stumbled upon something that made her “udderly” speechless.

“Seeing a cow kind of made me think I was hallucinating a little bit. I don’t live on a farm, and I don’t live near a farm,” she said.

Brookes found a heifer stuck in a culvert under Route 9. The cow appeared to be a little lean.

“She looked a little skinny. She didn’t look like she had just wandered off that morning,” Brookes said.

She contacted animal control and that’s when she found out the cow was Blossom who had been on the run for two months.

“We got her some hay immediately. Made sure that she was fed and be as happy as she could be,” she said.

Blossom was unable to leave the culvert on her own, so Middletown and Haddam firefighters planned her rescue over three days, not wanting to butcher the task at hand, as the feisty cow wasn’t taking any bull.

“She’s a big cow and she didn’t want to give up her freedom, so it was not always easy,” Brookes said.

On Tuesday, with a veterinarian monitoring, Blossom was tranquilized and then tied to a large sled.

“They had a whole team of 10, 15 people here working to help bring her up,” Brookes said.

Blossom was steered into a large trailer in about half an hour.

“The timing was impeccable. She woke up very shortly after they loaded her into the trailer,” Brookes said.

She said the cow was taken to a new farm in Killingworth where she says she’s “blossoming."

“I hope Blossom has a wonderful life on her new farm with her new family and I hope she stays in those fences,” Brookes said.