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Boo Boo's gone, but his memory lives on

It was a drizzly, foggy, dreary Wednesday, which made it just the right sort of day to go see Glenn and Kim Miller and hear the sad story of Boo Boo the steer.

His fenced square of pasture is terribly empty now. Freya the horse still trots around looking for him, but Boo Boo is gone, euthanized at the age of 12 because the arthritis that had started afflicting him a while ago had left him unable to stand.

Kim Miller said people will think she's crazy for saying it, but she knew the time had come two weeks ago when Boo Boo looked at her and a tear rolled down his face. After that, he wouldn't look at her again. She took that as his way of saying "Make it stop."

So she called a veterinarian, who came out to the farm and gently put Boo Boo down.

Now, a steer dying on a Plainfield Township dairy farm normally wouldn't be an item for the newspaper — most steers are sent off to be turned into hamburger at age 3, long before they have a chance to develop arthritis — but Boo Boo was not an ordinary steer.

To begin with, he was nearly 7 feet tall at his haunches and weighed more than a ton. The others on the farm are about 5 feet high at the rear and a couple of hundred pounds lighter, and none have the slightest interest in people.

But Boo Boo had developed an interest in people, because people had developed an interest in Boo Boo. The Millers farm abuts Bangor Road (Route 191) and after Boo Boo arrived, motorists began slowing or stopping to have a look at him.

Like Jumbo the elephant, he was a breathtaking example of his kind. And he became a landmark.

If the Millers happened to be outside, they would wave the curious into the driveway and let them take a close-up look. Some were intimidated, until they realized that Boo Boo was an extraordinarily gentle creature, gentle enough to pose for photos and to let the Miller's granddaughter sit on his back.

"He got so good at posing," Kim told me. "He would put his head down when it was time for a picture."

A small bus from a local day care would pass and the children would wave to Boo Boo. A family from Texas, no stranger to big steers, stopped to marvel at the sheer bulk of this one.

Like many people, I initially called Boo Boo a bull, but Kim corrected me.

"He's a steer," she said. "My husband wanted to make sure you knew that."

I nodded and moved on, because the difference was lost on me and I didn't want to seem ignorant. I looked it up later and learned that bulls and steers are both male bovines but bulls retain certain parts that steers are deprived of, surgically. And that's all I'll say about that.

Anyway, Kim acquired Boo Boo as a pet when he was 4 weeks old, so she was quite attached to him and still gets close to tears when she talks about his loss.

She said she broke up crying the other day when someone left a wreath on the property, with a stuffed cow in the middle and a sign that said "Moo Moo, RIP." The name was off but the sentiment was sweet.

Someone else left a bouquet of flowers, and someone else left a candle, and lots of people on Facebook and in the post office have been talking about Boo Boo over the past few weeks. Many wondered what had become of him and were crushed to learn he was gone.

"He taught us about love," Kim said. "That's what we have to remember."

Glenn Miller said Boo Boo had lived a good life.

"He was quite an attraction along the highway here," he said. "There's a hundred animals on the other side of the property and they don't give a hoot about them. They loved their Boo Boo."


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