It’s been a good week for lost livestock of the north.
Not only was Bra-a-a-ad, the young ram on the lam, captured and brought to the safety of a farm pen near Two Harbors, but Taz, a horse who had gone AWOL in the Chippewa National Forest two months ago, was reunited with his Cloquet owner.
After escaping on Oct. 29, Brad led would-be rescuers on a merry chase from Two Harbors to Duluth, then to Proctor and west into Midway Township, where a rescuer tranquilized him on Tuesday.
“It is a huge relief,” said Kelsey Rogers, who had teamed up with fellow animal lover Shana Roberts to try to capture Brad. “He was lucky every day he didn’t encounter predators, a car or an unleashed dog. He had a good head on him, thankfully, and folks who cared.”
Sightings poured into their phones and on social media. He’d been spotted at a soccer field. Then in someone’s yard. Then at Brighton Beach. He toured the grounds of Glensheen mansion, where he managed to elude three police officers by scampering into a ravine.
Coyotes were known to live in that ravine. But Brad must have picked up a survival skill or two during his weeks-long adventure, because he was next spotted at the railyard in Proctor, a city just outside Duluth.
It’s an active railyard with heavy equipment and workers were concerned that he could get trapped or injured, said Proctor police officer Mike Bradley. They were unaware of his growing fame on social media and in the news, but they called the police, who tried Sunday and Monday to corral Brad with the help of the railyard workers.
But dang, give that sheep a football and recruit him for the Vikings, because once again he evaded his pursuers. He ran from them and crawled under a stationary railcar before wriggling out the other side and booking it toward the woods.
