A bull loose on a winding two-lane highway above the Pacific coast in Northern California led sheriff's deputies on an hourslong chase late on Aug. 18 before they turned to the one tool their training hadn't covered: a lasso.
The animal was first spotted running along Highway 35, also known as Skyline Boulevard, in the hills above Half Moon Bay in San Mateo County, according to KTVU. San Mateo County Sheriff's deputies and California Highway Patrol officers tried for roughly two hours to corral the bull themselves without success. "They don't cover this in the police academy," Sheriff's Capt. Eamonn Allen, the department's Coastside commander, later told reporters.
Just after midnight, deputies called Samuel Ramos Palomino, a foreman with 35 years of experience handling livestock at nearby Sea Horse Ranch, who was asleep and due back at work himself at 4 a.m. He got up anyway, hitched a livestock trailer and drove to the scene. Standing in the bed of a sheriff's pickup truck as it crept alongside the bull, Palomino lassoed the animal — only to have the rope snap in his hands. He tied off what was left of it and roped the bull a second time, finally securing it around 2:30 a.m.
Palomino loaded the bull into his trailer and kept it overnight before returning it to its owner in the morning, Fox News reported. Officials said the bull had gotten loose from its enclosure, and its owner has since made repairs intended to keep the animal from wandering onto the highway again.
No injuries to drivers, officers or the bull were reported, and Highway 35 reopened to normal traffic once the animal was off the roadway. Sheriff's officials publicly thanked Palomino for responding in the middle of the night on short notice, noting that his decades of ranching experience — not squad cars or standard equipment — ultimately ended the hourslong standoff.
