Until recently, few people knew or cared about the tiny municipality of Zangberg in Bavaria, Germany. Today, Zangberg is on the world map and all over the Internet thanks to a runaway cow named Yvonne.

Yvonne - The Runaway Cow

Yvonne was being fattened at a farm in Zangberg before being sent to a slaughter house. She escaped from the farm three months ago and has been living in nearby forests ever since, and has even been seen grazing with deer in the forest.

After she caused an accident with a police car, a shoot order was issued to allow for people to kill the cow if they came upon it.

That brought the matter to the notice of animal rights activists, and an animal sanctuary named Gut Aiderbichl bought Yvonne from the farm and has agreed to allow the cow to graze for life.

But Yvonne doesn’t know and is still on the lam. Gut Aiderbichl is trying just about everything to coax the cow back, including enlisting the help of an animal psychic to communicate telepathically with the bovine, and bringing in a bull named Ernst to lure Yvonne back into captivity.

A helicopter has now been brought in to join the search, and German newspaper Bild has even put out a $14,000 reward for the cow’s safe capture. Pictures of Yvonne are plastered all over the Internet and on news and media publications worldwide.

With a cow on the lam and in the news headlines, it didn’t take long for 6-year-old Yvonne to get her own Facebook page and a Twitter account.

The Facebook account has earned lots of likes and expressions of support, not to mention the funny updates of life on the lam for a cow, such as: “Yvonne the German Cow: is away to sleep now in the nice forest, with a comfy bed made of old editions of Moos Of The World (it has udder uses too ) Lots of Mooooooooos to all my Fräulein friends >:-D~” and “Hellooooooo my friends. Yvonne here. Enjoying the Bavarian sunshine through the trees. Still free to roam and loving the freedom of the forest.”

The @KuhvonZangberg Twitter account for Yvonne the Cow is pretty new. Sample tweet: “Actually, I heard about that new “Planet of the Apes” film and was inspired. It’s hard wielding tools with hoofs, though.”

Zangberg, with its main claim to tourist fame so far being that it had a Nazi concentration camp during WWII, isn’t letting Yvonne’s escapades go to waste.

Zangberg Mayor Franz Märkl is quoted in the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung as saying that the cow had been trained well for the summer news vacuum, and now everyone in Germany “has heard of our lovely village.”

Photo – Yvonne the German Cow (Facebook)

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