CT Firefighters Rescue Cow from Swimming Pool

Using ropes and slings, firefighters removed a 1,200-pound cow from an in-ground pool in Bethlehem Thursday night.

The neutered male, technically a steer, had slipped through an opening in the fence at Percy Thomson Meadows with two other cows and hoofed it to the Thomson Road neighborhood where Fire Chief Ken LeClerc lives, LeClerc said. He encountered one of the massive creatures standing in the road about 10:45 p.m.

“I was coming home from the firehouse, and one of the three was in the road. I thought, ‘That’s a really big bear,’" he said. Then he saw that the beast was two different colors. Once he realized it was a cow, he looked around for any others.

On 12/03/2020 at 2246 hours, Bethlehem Volunteer Fire Department was called to assist in a large animal rescue. On...

Posted by Bethlehem Firefighters Association on Thursday, December 3, 2020

It didn’t take long to find them. The steer in the water was in an utter panic, loudly splashing while trying to kick away the pool cover that had become entangled in his legs, LeClerc said. The other was watching him.

“I shut my truck off… I could hear splashing. You know how much noise a kid makes splashing? You can imagine how much noise a cow makes,” he said. “He was a little upset.”

LeClerc called the regional dispatch center in Waterbury, and at first “there was a little bit of dead silence” on the other end of the phone, he said. “The dispatcher then said, " ‘You have what?’ "

Firefighters in cold water rescue suits got into the pool and cut the animal free from the cover. When he first got loose, he started swimming in circles in the deep end, LeClerc said.

The firefighters, three of whom are dairy farmers, used ropes, slings and their hands to pull and push the beefy bovine to the shallow end of the pool before steering him to the steps. They guided him up the stairs and he got out of the pool, he said.

The cow walked away with his buddies and, one by one, they wiggled back through the opening in the steel fence. He wasn’t injured, but LeClerc said he would have died of hypothermia and exhaustion had he been in the pool all night.

“We’re just glad we got him out, because it wouldn’t have been such a good outcome,” he said.

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