Heads up: This story, about a pet named Rowdy, is 100% bull.
Miniature Brahma bull, that is.
If you’ve been around downtown Napa recently on a Friday or Saturday, there’s a good chance you’ve spotted Rowdy the baby bull walking around the city center.
Wearing a leash, and sometimes accessories to match the occasion, Rowdy is proudly escorted by his owners, Ed Prusener and his daughter Nikki Prusener.
“I like to give kids a chance to pet an animal that they may not have seen before and to learn about them,” said Nikki Prusener. “A lot of people don’t even know where their food comes from anymore, so I like to be able to share information and educate people.”
“It’s a kick to see how people react to a little cow,” said Ed Prusener.
People are also reading…
He recalled a recent survey that showed a fair number of young adults have never seen a cow up close, “let alone touched one. And then we've had people in their 30s and 40s that have said, ‘I've seen little cows on TikTok and stuff like that I've always wanted to touch one.’ It thrills them to death.”
The Pruseners’ downtown bovine walkabouts all started with a different animal.
Last summer, the father-daughter team were raising a 3-month-old Black Angus bull named Levi.
“We wanted him acclimated to people, loud noises, sirens” and other such city hubbub, Ed Prusener said. They would walk Levi around their central Napa neighborhood but then branched out to downtown Napa.
Levi was a hit. “Everybody loved him down there,” said Ed Prusener.
For about four months Levi was a downtown regular, making many friends along the way.
Ed Prusener said he eventually could tell Levi was done being a celebrity, so he retired Levi to a spacious pasture on Second Avenue in the Coombsville area. That’s where the family raises more than a dozen other cattle.
Then Rowdy came into the picture. Rowdy was orphaned shortly after he was born, and the Pruseners agreed to foster the baby calf.
Because they live in a pocket of unincorporated Napa County within the city limits, they’re allowed to keep Rowdy at home.
“We picked him up at a month old,” said Ed Prusener. “He wasn’t really good at sucking milk out of a bottle. So we were feeding him with a big syringe for a while.” Now Rowdy eats both milk and a calf starter grain in a bucket.
After introducing Levi to downtown, the Pruseners figured it only made sense for Rowdy to get to know his city.
Not surprisingly, Rowdy quickly became Napa’s No. 1 four-legged VIP.
Prusener said he still gets surprised at how people react when they see the baby bull. Some will run across the street on impulse. Others will just stop dead in their tracks. One woman cried, he recalled.
“He’s a lot more popular than you’d think a cow would be,” he said.
Rowdy currently weighs about 105 pounds and could eventually grow to between 700 and 800 pounds. “I know that sounds huge,” said Ed Prusener, but he noted that other cattle, such as Levi, can top 1,800 pounds.
Prusener said that he gets a wide range of questions about Rowdy.
“Some will ask, ‘What is that?’ He gets called a donkey and a goat occasionally and we have to explain, ‘No, that's a cow.’ But the biggest question we get is, ‘Why do you have a cow downtown?’
“Our response has been, ‘Why not?’”
Rowdy has even been welcomed to visit at least one downtown bar. As soon as Rowdy made his entrance, “Oh, it was photo-op time,” said Ed Prusener. “Everybody was taking pictures with him and wanting to pet him and stuff.”
“We've been in almost any dog-friendly places downtown,” he added. Rowdy, who wears a “leash,” has even made short visits inside the north Napa Target and Safeway. He also gets regular baths at Pet Food Express.
“He's very well behaved,” said Ed Prusener.
Rowdy’s owners can tell when the baby bull needs to go poop, according to Ed and Nikki Prusener. Fortunately, Rowdy’s poops are easily scooped up in a regular dog poop bag.
For those that might not be familiar, Ed Prusener explained the different names for cattle.
“A bull is a fully intact male. Then you got a steer, which is a castrated bull. A cow has had a calf. Then you have what's called a heifer, which is a female that's never had a calf.”
Rowdy also calls up memories of “old” Napa. Many people think of Napa as a wine valley, "but that’s not what it always was,” said Ed Prusener. By walking around with Rowdy, he added, “it reminds people that Napa was once more of an agricultural community than a viticulture community.”
Animals make Nikki Prusener happy, she said.
“And at the end of the day, I want to put a smile on people’s faces because you never know when someone has been going through a rough time, and just seeing Rowdy might make their day better,” she said. “It especially makes me happy to see elderly people smile because he brings back memories from their childhood.”
“We've had several people say, ‘I've always wanted to pet a cow and I never thought I'd be able to,’ and they get to pet him and they just love it, and that makes us feel good, you know?”
Walking Rowdy is also a bit of a diversion for Ed Prusener, who for the past five years has been in treatment for leukemia.
“We look forward to the weekends,” he said.
Prusener also answered another common question the father and daughter get: “What's going to happen with Rowdy?” In other words, will he eventually be sold for meat?
No, said Ed Prusener. “He's gonna be a pet forever.”
Cowboy lassos runaway steer on Michigan highway, and more of today's top videos
Dashcam footage from a Michigan State Police patrol car shows the moment a runaway cow was lassoed by a wrangler, NASA has spotted wreckage on the moon, and more of today's top videos.
If you thought cowboys were a thing of the past, think again. Dashcam footage from a Michigan State Police patrol car shows the moment a runaw…
NASA spotted the wreckage of a lunar lander, which could be the first privately-funded spacecraft to land on the moon.
Canada's 2.5 million acre wildfires draw U.S. crews to battle the flames with more help on the way from Australia and New Zealand.
Once home to some 80 thousand Ukrainians, little remains of the city of Bakhmut, scene of the longest and bloodiest battle of Russia’s invasio…
A volcano around 45 miles (about 70 kilometers) southeast of Mexico City as been showing increasing signs of activity in recent days, leading …
Meet Khaleesi, the Komodo Dragon who has recently found a new home for herself at the ZSL London zoo. This giant reptile, named after one of H…