The estimated 715-pound longhorn steer that stopped the trains at Newark Penn Station on Dec. 14, becoming a New Jersey sensation in the process, reached one of his horns around the right side of his body last week and scratched his hindquarters.
“Nice, he’s got his own backscratcher,” said Mike Stura, the founder and president of Skylands Animal Rescue and Sanctuary.
Hundreds of viewers watched Ricardo in the live-streamed video from the Wantage-based animal rescue farm, where the bovine that escaped his slaughterhouse fate in Newark returned on Friday, Feb. 9, following a six-week stay at Cornell’s hospital for large animals in upstate New York.
Stura had rushed Ricardo to the hospital on Christmas Eve when he realized a wound on the steer’s leg was worsening.
“It didn’t look like much, but it ended up suddenly getting infected,” Stura said. “He had a little road rash on his right rear hock — on his back leg — and it looked like nothing and then all of a sudden it looked unhappy.”