Growing up in Houston you can always tell when it’s Rodeo time. People don their best Western shirts and cowboy boots, country music fills the air, and the cattle roam loose along the city’s many interstates. Wait, what? Nope. That’s not normal. While the odd steer getting loose is something that’ll happen in Texas, this is the only time I’ve seen more than 30 of them crisscrossing the wide highway near my childhood home.
All of this happened a few hours ago just north of Houston in the Spring/The Woodlands area of I-45 between Springwoods Village Parkway and Rayford-Sawdust Road. A Silverado HD pulling a trailer full of cattle leaving the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo somehow lost all or most of its load while driving on the Interstate. The details are vague at this point, but the videos are not.
Here’s one from KPRC-TV showing a bunch of Harris County Constables attempting to wrangle the steers (I assume, I have to be Texan for a second and say that technically I’d have to know whether these were castrated to know if they were bulls or steers, so I’ll just use them both here though I assume they’re mostly steers) and not succeeding. Without a rope or a horse, there’s not a lot you can do to get a cow or a steer to follow your directions.
I love seeing all these folks trying to get their Cowboy Cadillacs out of the way of bull, thereby avoiding any damage.
Cows loose on I-45 near Spring @KPRC2 pic.twitter.com/4Ss7LMmBqW
— Colleen Johnson (@coolleenjohnson) March 24, 2025
It gives a new meaning to SLAB, amirite?
If you’ve got a lot of time on your hands, there’s a full hour of helicopter footage of this happening and you’ll see people running around trying to corral all of them:
The northbound portion of I-45, which is a busy highway, was entirely shut down as spooked steer pranced around waiting to be scooped up by the police. It’s not like traffic is ever good on I-45, but at lunchtime rush hour it can be awful on a normal day, so this clearly didn’t help.
A KPRC reporter said that, as of 2:00 pm CST, a few of the cattle were still missing, though they at least were not on the Interstate. Again, this is basically my exit off the highway as my family had a home near there for almost 40 years. If those steers are smart (almost none of them are) they’re headed northeast, where it thins out a little bit. If they head south there’s a Rudy’s BBQ and if they head southeast there’s Corcksrew BBW, which means the next time you’re gonna see ’em is on a plate.
They herd about the $3 Margarita Mondays at El Torito…
Bet you the large policewoman was shouting moo-ve over.
And not a single one of those wannabe freeway cowboys has a lasso?
I bet they hope this ne-heifer happens again.
…and nobody had the sense to dangle a red cape in front of the exit ramp.
That’s pretty good lane discipline. Controlled steering.
I came here to make this joke, get yer own :v
I’m glad that happened earlier today. That’s right after my exit (I take the Rayford exit, heading north) for work and traffic would have been backed up for miles on the way in. I mean there’s never really a good time to have even a lane of I-45 shut down, much less all of it, but at least people can easily see them during the day. I am currently at work and it’s usually dark on the way in.
The only way this story could be more American is if the motorists had all grabbed their guns and started shooting at the cattle.
Nah, it was fully american. We only like to shoot at someone if the other party is unarmed.
It’s a mooooving violation for single occupancy cattle to use the HOV lane.
I love all the noncommittal cowboys that hop out to “help” for about 15 seconds before they realize “oh shit it’s a large animal with horns” and happily hop right back in their SUV’s.
We just had some visitors from Michigan in town and first thing they asked was where all the cows and horses were. I’m so glad this didn’t happen while they were here, we would never live down the stereotype.
Imagine the trouser emergency the moron looking down at their phone and driving had when they looked up and saw this.
The action sequence is literally bull, shit.
So is the conversation between the passenger and driver.
“Bull!”
“Shit!”
My grandfather got in the paper after a couple of cows got loose mid interstate. So don’t do that.
Love it another music reference- “Bulls on Parade!” By RATM. Thanks Matt!
Mooooveover coming through
Bro-dozer, meet bull-dozer.
This exact thing happened in I think was the early 90’s. It was on I45 just south of FM1960. My wife had a job by Greenspoint Mall about 20 minutes from the house. We had no cell phone. I spoke with her about 5:00 pm and she said she was on the way home. At 10:45 she arrived home to a bunch of worried people. She explained that the freeway was shut down and decided to take the back way into The Woodlands. One headlight happened to go out and back then it was very sparsely populated and very dark. She stopped at a convenience store and a good Samaritan said she could follow them back to the village. I am sure with today’s increased traffic load it was a mess!
All cattle, no hat?
Shiny boots, no mud.
Somewhere in heaven (hopefully) Clara Peller is nodding and smiling, her question finally answered.
Yes, I am sure that this was el torobull situation for all.