Water buffalo escapes California home, gets involved in low-speed chase with CHP officers

The California Highway Patrol was involved in a different type of chase on Monday afternoon, a very low-speed pursuit of a wayward water buffalo that managed to squeeze through a fence and was wandering rather aimlessly around North Zediker and Ashlan avenues in Fresno.

“I was on my way back from the store, and he was standing there in the road, and I didn’t want anybody to get hit,” said Dan Villanueva, who lives up the road from the 20-acre lot that is home to the water buffalo.

After calling in and reporting the water buffalo, Villanueva and a CHP officer managed to steer the fully-grown bovid into a fenced-in area running along an adjacent canal and alerted its owner.

While waiting, the water buffalo munched away on some grass while its neighbors, more water buffalo and some cows, looked on from the other side of the fence. “They’re all, ‘How come you’re out?’” Villanueva joked.

Eventually, Ken Moua and cousin Leng Moua, who raise the livestock, arrived to take the water buffalo home. It walked peacefully away from the canal, made a right onto North Zediker Avenue, and stopped to take one last look back before walking through a gate in the fence.