AP News, November 16th, 2007
Sheriff's deputies on horseback rounded up scores of heifers after a cattle truck overturned on an interstate overpass, closing the highway for hours and killing 23 of the yearlings.
Most of the heifers were killed in the truck or on the interstate, but some jumped off the bridge onto the highway below, authorities said. Some of the dead cows were later fed to big cats at an exotic animal shelter.
"Some of them had to be put down and removed from the scene," Shreveport police Lt. Breck Bickham said.
The Caddo Parish sheriff's mounted patrol set up stock trailers in the median of Interstate 220 and began corralling the 117 calves soon after the truck overturned about 11 p.m. Wednesday.
The wreck happened when a number of cows shifted their weight, police said.
Some of the cows wandered a mile or two in either direction, resulting in police warning drivers in the area to watch out for stray cattle. Two cars were damaged by hitting heifers, Shreveport police spokeswoman Kacee Hargrave said.
The highway was reopened about 11 a.m. Thursday, after all of the cattle were accounted for. The state transportation department dispatched 23 carcasses to a sanctuary for lions, tigers and other big cats.
By early afternoon, Yogie and Friends Exotic Animal Sanctuary had hauled six of the donated carcasses — about 300 pounds each — into pens for the larger animals at the shelter, executive director Jennie Senier said.
The shelter has 20 cats, including seven tigers, six lions and a bobcat.
It was a windfall for the sanctuary, which lost 40,000 pounds of meat when a freezer failed earlier this fall, and is also a more natural food for the cats, Senier said.
"They got the fur, they got the bones," Senier said.
