Captured by Cowhand – Bull Keeps Airport in Uproar Two Days

Reprinted from The Miami Herald, January 30, 1949

One thing is known about an escaped bull which kept the giant Miami International Airport in an uproar for two days. His name was not Ferdinand. He didn’t like flowers. He didn’t like police or firemen or airplanes. He just wanted to be alone, and the 2,500-acre expanse suited him perfectly except for the people.

The airport guardians, alert to any emergency, were startled Tuesday night by one alarm they never expected to get. The control tower reported a bull on the runway. Four fire trucks responded. They surrounded the bull, pinned him down in a ring of their searchlights while county firemen tried to think of a way to capture him.

Help arrived in an emergency jeep manned by two Dade County policemen. Patrolman Leslie Quigg, Jr., was swinging a rope. In the best tradition of the frontier west he lassoed the critter by the leg. But this bull was made of stern stuff and didn’t know he was licked. He set off into the outer darkness so fast the rope burned through Quigg’s hand and when the patrolman dived from the jeep to snatch the rope, the bull charged in and kicked Quigg on the hand.

The bull took off again, outrunning everything on wheels or on foot. All day Wednesday the bull roamed the airport while the men in the control tower and pilots of the incoming planes had feathers in their stomachs. The bull eluded all the amateur matadors, picadors and toreadors who volunteered for single and mass combat. Finally, an experienced cowman, mounted on an equally experienced cow pony hastily rounded up, made the capture. The bull had escaped from a nearby dairy.

“It took us two days to catch that bull,” reported Director A. B. Curry of the Port Authority. “It just goes to show there’s never a dull moment in running an airport.”