On the morning of August 24, 2024, a water buffalo in Pleasant Hill, Iowa, escaped from its owner. The owner had been preparing to slaughter it for meat. He called the police and asked them to put the animal down. The police refused. The buffalo spent the next four days loose in suburban Des Moines, was filmed on a Ring camera walking up to someone's front door at night, was shot by a police officer, tranquilized twice, hospitalized at Iowa State University, and is now living at a sanctuary. The community named him PHill. A water buffalo in a Des Moines suburb is not something anyone expects to see on a Saturday morning. Water buffalo are native to South and Southeast Asia. The wild species, Bubalus arnee, is endangered and lives in India, Nepal, Bhutan, Thailand, and Cambodia. The domesticated version has been bred for thousands of years for milk, meat, and draft work across Asia, the Middle East, and southern Europe. Italian mozzarella di bufala is made from its milk. A small number of domesticated water buffalo are kept in the United States on private farms and exotic ranches, but there is no feral population anywhere in North America. PHill was a privately owned farm animal being raised for slaughter six miles east of downtown Des Moines. When the responding officer arrived Saturday morning, the owner described the animal as aggressive and asked police to kill it. The officer told the owner the department would not put down an animal unless it posed a direct threat to the public. The buffalo had already disappeared into the surrounding area. Over the next three days, PHill moved through Pleasant Hill and into Des Moines. Residents spotted him in backyards, along fence lines, and in standing water. On Monday, Jessica Eshelman's Ring doorbell camera captured him walking up to her front porch and snorting at the door. The footage went viral. A neighbor filmed him standing in his backyard the same day. At some point during the search, a Pleasant Hill police officer shot PHill with a firearm. The department's public statement did not explain the circumstances of the shooting in detail. By Tuesday evening, PHill was located in a sand pit filled with water on the east side of Des Moines. Police, Polk County Conservation, the Blank Park Zoo, the Animal Rescue League of Iowa, and multiple law enforcement agencies coordinated a plan to capture him alive. They decided to wait until daylight rather than attempt a recovery in the dark with storms approaching. Wednesday morning, responders coaxed PHill out of the water. A veterinarian administered a tranquilizer dart. PHill kept walking. Drones and ground crews followed him along property lines as the first tranquilizer took partial effect. Thirty minutes later, a second dart was administered. PHill went down. The team loaded him into a trailer, administered reversal drugs, antibiotics, and vitamins, and transported him to Iowa State University's Large Animal Hospital. The prognosis was listed as guarded. PHill survived. The gunshot wound and the stress of four days on the run had taken a toll, but he recovered at the veterinary hospital over the following weeks. His owner surrendered him to the Des Moines Police Department. The Iowa Farm Sanctuary took him in and announced that PHill would not be sent to slaughter. He would live out his life at the sanctuary. The Washington Post called him a folk hero. The Iowa Farm Sanctuary's statement said the local community absolutely rallied for PHill and did not rest until he was given a fair chance at safety and freedom. They noted the irony: an outpouring of love for a farmed animal in the epicenter of American animal agriculture. PHill escaped the morning he was supposed to die, outran the police for four days, took a bullet and two tranquilizer darts, and ended up in a sanctuary because a suburb full of strangers decided he deserved to live.