A rescue pig named Dorothy spent a couple hours hanging out in the Schuylkill Expressway’s breakdown lane Wednesday afternoon.
Her foster caretaker Allyson Stephens was taking her and another rescue to a vet in New Jersey when Dorothy apparently jumped over a trailer gate and got onto the roadway near King of Prussia, according to the many media reports on her escape.
The curly-haired pig ran down the expressway for nearly a mile. A few good Samaritans were finally able to bring her to a halt along the side of the road, where they helped her out with some water.
With help from the Pennsylvania State Police, Stephens was eventually able to retrieve Dorothy and take her back home to Spring City in Chester County, the Inquirer reported. Stephens is a volunteer with Eastern Snouts, a New Jersey group that rescues pigs who are neglected or need new homes.
Dorothy’s not the first non-dog or -cat to escape onto a Pennsylvania highway in recent years and cause havoc. She’s not even the only pig to hit the road in the Philly area.
It turns out this happens regularly, whether with chickens, cows, horses — or monkeys. Sometimes the incident ends well for the escapee, as it did with Dorothy, and sometimes… not so well.
Here are a few of the notable animal-on-the-highway stories that have made headlines.
Out for an early morning run
This past February, a motorist captured video of a horse galloping at high speed (insert horsepower joke here) along northbound I-95 near the Girard Avenue exit early on a Tuesday morning.
Police said at the time that they thought it had run away from one of the city’s urban riding clubs and gotten onto the highway, rather than having escaped from a trailer.
The horse apparently exited the road on its own and police corralled it in Port Richmond, from where it was taken back home.
Lab monkeys temporarily freed by crash
Up in Montour County, in Central Pa., a pickup hauling a trailer transporting 100 monkeys was in a crash on Interstate 80 in January 2022, and several of the animals escaped.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the cynomolgus macaques were from the African country of Mauritius, and were en route to a CDC-approved quarantine facility after arriving on a flight to New York’s JFK Airport, AP reported. They’re the mostly widely used primate in preclinical toxicology studies, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information.
Troopers searched for the monkeys in frigid weather, rifles in hand. Local firefighters used thermal imaging to try to locate the animals and a helicopter assisted, a local newspaper reported.
All but one of the macaques were soon recaptured or accounted for, including three that ended up being euthanized for unspecified reasons.
State police urged people not to approach the remaining monkey if they happened to see it, saying it was hard to predict how a wild animal would react to an approaching person. The 100th macaque was finally found a day after the crash occurred, the CDC said.
Away from the manger
Cows occasionally wander the city.
In 2017, a cow being used in a live nativity scene at the Old First Reformed United Church of Christ in Old City got loose — twice.
After the first escape, Stormy the cow was initially corralled by police at around 3 a.m. But a few hours later the bovine got out again, strolled into the Wyndham Hotel parking garage at Fourth and Arch, and made it up to the fourth floor before being caught and brought back to the church for good.
In October 2021, another cow wandered away from a slaughterhouse, Al-Baraka Halal Meat at Lycoming and Elser streets in North Philly.
It was seen running through traffic near the busy intersection where Erie and Germantown avenues meet at North Broad Street.
The slaughterhouse, about one-third of a mile north of the cow sighting, later confirmed it was their animal and said they’d quickly retrieved it.
Loose livestock roam the streets of Philly more often than you’d think, according to ACCT Philly, an animal care provider that has a contract with the city.
“Just last week we got in a pig who clearly escaped the slaughterhouse, he still had a tag on from auction,” spokesperson Sarah Barnett told Billy Penn at the time. “Thankfully, he went to sanctuary. We also will sometimes see chickens who are found near the live markets who we believe escaped. It’s quite sad.”
Death in the Afternoon
Speaking of sad… In November 2016, a bull being unloaded at a slaughterhouse at Girard Avenue and Hancock Street in Fishtown escaped and made its way onto I-95 and the Vine Street Expressway, per Philly.com.
The bull was lassoed at 8th and Vine, but police were still worried it could run back into the road and cause an accident.
So, under police direction, a Pennsylvania Game Commission conservation officer shot twice with a 12-gauge shotgun, killing the animal.
“It was simply an emergency situation where they were concerned about public safety,” a Game Commission spokesperson said.
