Brookings runaway cow goes viral

BROOKINGS, S.D. (KELO) — A video of a cow on the loose outside a coffee shop in Brookings has gone viral on social media.

There are burgers on the menu at Cottonwood Bistro, so you can imagine the staff’s surprise when they witnessed a cow running past.

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“This can’t be real, but totally a Midwest thing to happen,” barista Shae Hanson said.

“This was one of the funniest things I’ve ever witnessed in my life,” manager and head cook Blake Fabre said.

Fabre said the cow took advantage of its brief freedom.

“It was kind of far away at first, and it was running just between some trees, not a huge deal, and it got closer and closer. Then my manager brain, of course, turned on and I was like, ‘Okay, I have glass windows, I have glass outside.’ I got a little more concerned,” Fabre said.

Fabre estimates the cow was on the move for a little more than 30 minutes, but once it was corralled, Fabre breathed a sigh of relief.

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“There was a tree outside, and they just tied her up,” Fabre said.

Staff posted a video of the cow’s adventure on the company’s TikTok account. As of Wednesday afternoon, it has over 3 million views.

“It went viral overnight basically,” Fabre said.

“I woke up the next morning, and it was posted on TikTok, and it popped up on my For You Page, and I was like, ‘Holy crap.’ It had like 100,000 likes and like 1,000,000 views overnight,” Hanson said.

The staff were pretty entertained by the whole ordeal, but at the end of the day, they’re just happy that the cow they named Bessie is safe and sound.

“We were really nervous about her getting hurt, but she was corralled,” Fabre said. “She’s all good, and we’re very happy. All of us watched it go back in the trailer ourselves, and this time it looks like the trailer was shut.”

As of Wednesday afternoon, the TikTok video also has over 400,000 likes, more than 5,700 comments and almost 80,000 shares