No bull: Roslindale bovine was actually a steer, but now has a name and is looking for a home

The MSPCA reports Moodini the Roslindale Bull, um, Steer, is now comfortably ensconced at its Nevins Farm in Methuen, where he is undergoing state mandated medical testing and exams before he can be re-homed to an area more suitable for one of our larger mammals than woods out back of a strip mall in New England's largest city.

Moodini, a young Hereford steer - meaning he had gotten the snip at some point in his young life - spent two months hoofing it around out back of the Walgreens pharmacy in the American Legion Highway strip mall near the Hyde Park line after somehow making his way there from the area of Pagel Playground up on the Jamaica Plain line along Hyde Park Avenue.

"Moodini escaped from a resident who was unaware that farm animals, with the exception of permitted chickens, are not allowed within the City of Boston," an MSPCA spokesperson says.

We don’t often get calls about large animals loose in a city, and when we do, it’s usually for wild animals like a moose or a bear, maybe a horse that escaped from a fenced in area." Kaycie McCarthy, equine and farm animal outreach and rescue manager at Nevins Farm said. "So, this was new territory for us!

The MSPCA got involved after somebody spotted Moodini last week and Boston Animal Care and Control, which also does not tend to get many reports of roaming cattle, asked for help - Animal Control managed to get him to lumber into an enclosure by luring him with some food, but then city workers found themselves on the horns of a dilemma: They had no way to move him or place to keep him, since the city animal shelter - also in Roslindale - is set up for somewhat smaller animals..

McCarthy said the thick brush the steer had turned into a new home made removing him particularly difficult:

We had to build a chute using livestock panels that was roughly 300 feet long to guide Moodini into our trailer through thick brush. We’re lucky that someone from the Parks Department was there with a chainsaw because we had to clear some small trees to get our trailer into position.

The whole process took about two-and-a-half hours and a dozen people. But almost all of that time was spent on the complex setup. Once we opened the steer’s pen, he took off up the chute and was in the trailer within minutes.

Setting up the chute (photo by MSPCA):

Although Moodini is still in a form of quarantine, the MSPCA is already looking for a place to which they can steer him, "in a home with adopters who have cattle experience and other cattle to keep him company, as well as equipment needed to best care for him.

Since Boston zoning bars cattle ranching in most of the city, that probably means somewhere out on the range; people who have the room and expertise to have him moove in, can submit a query at mspca.org/nevinsadopt.