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John Di Leonardo got a shocking call when a Long Island bull that famously escaped slaughter in 2023 was finally found after two months on the lam in Suffolk County.
“We were on the phone with the police. They said, ‘We’re gonna shoot him,’ ” Di Leonardo, Humane Long Island’s executive director and anthrozoologist, recently recalled to The Post.
“I yelled, ‘No, don’t do that! I’ll get a sanctuary on the way! I’ll be right there!’ So thankfully, they listened and just corralled him and did not take that shot they had planned,” he said.
The frantic intervention landed the iconically brash bovine, aptly renamed “Bully Joel” after another famous Long Islander, a peaceful life in New Jersey.
It also was just is one of many wild encounters Di Leonardo has had on the job, where he strives to protect all creatures great and small from Manhattan to Montauk.
“We save about 1,200 animals a year,” Di Leonardo said on the grounds of Humane Long Island’s Baiting Hollow facility, where he and his wife, Juliana, care for animals before their new, safe forever home gets finalized.
“We get animals in every single week. It could be a handful — or it could be 200,” said Di Leonardo, who has safely wrangled many other bulls in his job as well.
Di Leonardo’s role is treating critters that are either abandoned or rescued from harrowing circumstances across Long Island and parts of New York City, such as a small kangaroo — also called a wallaby — named “Jackie Legs” who was recovered from the Coney Island boardwalk in 2023.
“We actually got a call about him being exploited in Madison Square Park. There was a guy charging money for pictures,” he said, recalling that a concerned citizen had no luck with police, as they were unfamiliar with legal technicalities.
Eventually, Di Leonardo teamed up with the NYPD’s animal cruelty unit to create an undercover operation, using the volunteer caller as a spy to tail the marsupial’s handler, then 22-year-old Michael Gibbons, who had bought his pet for nearly $4,000.
“She sat on him for a couple of hours while the authorities got themselves together, got down there and confiscated that wallaby,” Di Leonardo said. “Now he lives in a sanctuary where he’s living a much more natural life.”
Another time last year, the animal rescuer had the task of handling a South African ostrich, also known as a lesser rhea, found inside a Bellmore, LI, basement with several other exotic animals.
“It was huge at 5 months old — almost as tall as me,” he said. “She was surrounded by venomous reptiles, and I’m sure she was terrified.”
Other cases involve animal abandonment, such as a recent baker’s dozen of ducks rescued from a Brookhaven, LI, park.
He said Suffolk County has become an unfortunate recent hotspot for abandoned animals, particularly since the Double D Bar Ranch in Manorville was slammed with 112 animal-neglect counts last winter.
“We had over 160 birds from them,” said Di Leonardo, who’s been swung at and gotten death threats while doing his job at times.
In other instances, he’s negotiated the release of animals from slaughterhouses by trading vegan food with the businesses.
Di Leonardo also released an extremely rare orange lobster into North Fork waters after it was spotted inside the tank of a ShopRite in Bay Shore on Friday. The grocery chain was happy to oblige.
Di Leonardo, who used to work with people with special needs, said, “I always wanted to help the group that needed the most in the world.
“Right now, there’s no other group on the planet that is being exploited and harmed on such a large scale as animals.”
He said one of his favorite aspects of the job, where many rescues will be viewable at Humane Long Island’s Aug. 6 gala in Riverhead, is witnessing how animals adapt after just a few days out of harm’s way.
“They’ve never known a human touch to be a good thing. So when they come, they’re often terrified,” he said.
“After a couple of days or maybe a couple of weeks, they realize that we’re here to love them and care for them. Many of them become very social and will follow us around and crave our attention.”
English (US)