On Wednesday morning, Capt. Chad Reiman was sitting in his Norfolk, Neb., office when he heard radio traffic that immediately piqued his interest. There was a report about a car driving through the city’s downtown area with a cow inside of it.
Reiman “just had to see it for myself because it seemed so unusual,” he told The Washington Post. He drove to the scene, where he found a fully grown, black-and-white dappled steer with long protruding horns riding shotgun in his owner’s modified Ford Crown Victoria sedan.
“It was quite a big surprise,” said Reiman, with the Norfolk Police Division. “We were all kind of expecting it to be a smaller animal, like a calf, that would actually fit into a vehicle, not the large animal that we actually discovered there.”
The animal was Howdy Doody, a 2,200-pound, 9-year-old Watusi-longhorn mix steer who’s more dog-like than fierce fighting bull. His owner, Lee Meyer, said Howdy Doody enjoys going on walks on a leash, getting treats and, yes, feeling the wind rush past his face when they go on rides. Howdy Doody also knows some commands, such as “back up” and “come here.”
In Neligh, Neb., where the Meyers live, Howdy Doody has become a bit of a local celebrity through his appearances in parades — during which he’s often perched next to Meyer in the modified Crown Victoria. But in Norfolk, a city of some 24,000 residents, authorities considered the duo’s ride to be a safety hazard. After Meyer was stopped by police, he was issued a warning for vision obstruction and unsecured load. He was also asked to drive Howdy Doody home.
“I mean, there weren’t a whole lot of options,” Reiman said. “What would you expect me or anybody to do with an over 1,500-pound animal in the middle of a downtown in a city? It’s not like I could take him to the dog pound. There was only one option, and that was to let that gentleman drive back to his home.”
How did a massive steer wind up inside a Crown Vic? That’s the result of what Meyer described as an “aha moment” he had about seven years ago while thinking about how he could drive around with his beloved pet.
“My granddaughter thought it was a bad idea and that it’d never work,” Meyer told The Post. “So I said, ‘Well, Grandpa can do anything, but it might take me a while.’ I wanted to prove her wrong.”
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