Beware the mailbox that dares anger a bull on the loose, for as the saying goes: you mess with the bull, you get the horns.
Body camera video from a police officer shows the moment a 9-month-old bull named "Butch" got loose and laid waste to such a mailbox in Stafford Township after escaping from a local farm Wednesday.
“Officer Pascale was not amooooosed when he got dispatched to this call on Hilliard Ave today,” the Stafford Township Police Department posted on its Facebook page.
After a quick lick – perhaps to try and sense its fear through taste – the video shows the bull hooking the mailbox from underneath with its horn and yanking it up off the ground, along with the post it was attached to.
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It turns out mailboxes are not cut out to be matadors. Who knew?
The officer, parked next to the bovine, can be heard chuckling as he calls someone. “She’s busy assaulting a mailbox right now,” the officer says.
Stafford Township police Capt. Jim Vaughn called it a “great escape” and said the bull got loose – along with several pigs and a goat – through a gate that was not properly secured.
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After a while, animal control arrived and managed to secure the bull by enticing it with food, Vaughn said.
Despite the video also showing the bull darting through the front yard of a house, the only property damage done was to the mailbox, Vaughn added.
On Thursday, the bull was taken to Skylands Animal Sanctuary and Rescue in Sussex County, New Jersey, where he'll have much more room to roam.
"He'll be fantastic," Skylands's Mike Stura told NBC10. "He's nice as it is, you know. He was playing with that mailbox. That was just playing. He wasn't mad."
The bull's owner, Veronica Tkaczuk, told NBC10 she rescued Butch when he was just weeks old so he wouldn't be raised for slaughter.
"He's so big and so strong and I would hate for something bad to happen," she said. Nonetheless, she added, it's "a little sad" to see him go.
