Call it bleating the odds!
A lost lamb police rescued from the Gowanus Expressway this month will live out her days munching grass and rubbing hooves at a farm with other four-legged escape artists, according to the kind-hearted benefactor who took the baby sheep in after her trot through traffic.
“She’s doing great,” said Mike Stura, who runs the Skylands Animal Sanctuary in bucolic New Jersey.
Stura, who named the lamb Palmer after one of his faithful farmhands, built a reputation as the go-to guy for city Animal Care and Control officials looking to hand off wayward critters, after offering refuge to other beasts pulled from city streets — including a young bull that cops corralled at the Prospect Park Parade Ground in 2017.
Indeed, the rescuer said his farm was the first place officials from Animal Control called, after officers with the Police Department’s Highway Patrol nabbed the cloven-foot commuter on March 13, near the 38th Street exit on the highway’s Queens-bound side.
Palmer was most likely on the run from certain death at the hands of a butcher when motorists spotted her strolling among passing cars on the expressway, but — due to liability and public relations concerns — her former owners are unlikely to come forward demanding her return, Stura said.
“Nobody will step forward looking for the animal, because they’re afraid of liability issues,” he said. “If the animal causes an accident, and she’s your animal, you’re liable for it.”
And Palmer won’t only share her lush new digs about an hour’s drive from the city with the bovine — she’ll spend her days frolicking with other sheep, goats, pigs, turkeys, ducks, and a goose named Ted, some of whom also escaped area slaughterhouses for the greener pasture.
Skylands Animal Sanctuary is currently closed to visitors for the winter, but Stura expects to reopen the grounds in May — which may still be too soon for guests to nuzzle up to the fuzzball, according to her new guardian, who said she still has some growing up to do.
