Emily (cow)

Emily was a cow (Bos taurus) who escaped from a slaughterhouse in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, by jumping a gate and wandered for 40 days eluding capture.

[1] Within a year of Emily's arrival at the abbey, she was joined by a calf, a pair of turkeys, a mother goat with her two kids, and three rabbits, all of whom were rescued from slaughter and other inhumane conditions.

A week before her death, Emily was visited and blessed by Krishna Bhatta, a local Hindu priest of the Lakshmi Temple in Ashland, Massachusetts,[4] who placed a golden thread around her leg and one through the hole in her ear that once held the number tag when she arrived at the slaughterhouse.

Meg and Lewis Randa commissioned artist Lado Goudjabidze to sculpt a life-sized bronze statue of Emily, adorned with a blanket and flowers, Hindu signs of respect, to stand above her grave.

[5] After Emily's death, hair clippings from her markings on the forehead and from the tail tip, traces of her blood, and a piece of golden thread placed through her ear by the Hindu priest were released into river Ganges at Benares, India, in April 2003.