Chicago-area principal turns cowboy after escaped cow wanders onto campus

Being a grade school principal can sometimes feel like herding cattle. So our next guest was well prepared for what happened at his school in Bridge. Take a look. A cow. Yeah. Wandered onto campus at Trinity Lutheran School yesterday. Principal Andy DeWitt played cowboy. He is here with us now to walk us through what happened. Thanks for being with us this afternoon. Nice. You got the hat, too. I'll go ahead and put it at it here. Okay, so, I mean, what happened yesterday? You know, it was right at dismissal. So we were dismissing the kids from school. Everyone's leaving the school, and I was watching a kid leave, and all of a sudden, a teacher, my back was turned to where the cow ended up being, and a teacher goes, hey, there's a cow there. And I turned around, and sure enough, I was almost face-to-face with the cow. So then the pastor of the church helped me. We helped wrangle the cow around to the pasture and bring it back and open the gate and put it back where it belonged. How did you know what to do? Are you a principal by day, cowboy at night? Definitely not a cowboy by night, no. I did not know what to do. I guess you can say God guided me in what to do and how to handle the situation. I know that cows are pretty docile creatures, so I just kind of walked towards it and helped kind of guide it. Do we know where it came from? Yeah, there's a pasture right behind our playground, backs up to it. And they have cows come every year, and our preschoolers really love it. Our kids really love it to see the cows through the fence and sometimes where you can feed them and things like that. And somehow the cow was able to escape. This is like a Pixar movie. It's not every day. I got to hear some of the reactions from the kids. What were they saying? They were pretty shocked. Some of them were a little scared just because cows are huge. Some of them were a little scared, but some of them were pretty excited. They were asking me, too, what I was doing and how I did it. And they were asking me if I was going to visit with the cows again today and things like that. So they had fun with it. Are you guys making any changes around the school just in case he wants to come back for a visit? Yeah, I don't know. We might change our mascot. I know we're the Tigers now, but we might become the cows or something like that. But, yeah, we're definitely going to have to, I guess, maybe come up with some safety protocols on a cow. Tell us a little bit about the school. So we are a private Lutheran school. We are preschool through eighth grade. We have a really, really fun school, really great school. We offer after school activities such as basketball, volleyball, newspaper club, cheerleading, things like that. One of our best programs that we kind of have is for the you're starting off school and preschool. We have a outdoor play-based preschool program where kids learn through play, social-emotional growth, that sort of thing. We help them to figure out problem-solving skills, and they learn through that. It's really cool. It's really fun. Like I said, outdoor, even when it's raining, they're outside and having fun. What do all the kids think about their principal being kind of a social media star right now? Because this video is blowing up. Yeah, I don't know. We'll see. They thought it was kind of cool listening and hearing that I was going to be on the news. And they, you know, is the cow going to come with you? And I said, no, I don't think the cow is going to come with me. I'm not going to go outside and find the cow. I'm sure it'll come back soon, maybe. Yeah, how are you taking all of this in? It was a shock, definitely a shock for sure. It's pretty cool, you know, getting people texting stuff from people putting on social media and the Facebook page and on their personal page and sharing with their friends and family and asking questions. It was not every day you knew you're a suburban principal and you have to answer questions about how you wrangle a cow. Yeah, this is a first for me too, talking to a principal about a cow on campus. By the way, when the cow was returned or went back, did you learn the name of the cow from the owner? Does it have a name? No, I did not learn the name of the cow from the owner. It did have a tag hanging from its ear. I think it was number 2709 or something like that. Okay, we'll call it 2709 then. I kind of like that. Yeah, the preschoolers maybe name it. I don't know. Well, Eddie, I appreciate you joining us here on The Loop. What an experience you had. I say you rocked that cowboy hat for the rest of the week, my man, and the rest of the month. Thank you so much. You have a great day. And I think you just found your Halloween costume, too, if you already did that one. I think I did. I think you're right. All right, man. Take it easy. Take it easy. All right, thank you. Wow.