After days on the run, a gunshot wound, national news coverage, and a viral story, Phill the water buffalo has journeyed home to Iowa Farm Sanctuary — and brought the nonprofit a wave of new local visitors.
The escapee was first spotted roaming around Pleasant Hill, a suburb of Des Moines, on Aug. 24. His former owner described him as an “aggressive and dangerous” animal, which led the Pleasant Hill Police Department to shoot the buffalo when it neared a four-lane highway.
The Iowa Farm Sanctuary (IFS), located almost 100 miles from where Phill first escaped from a farm, started getting calls about the animal.
“Supporters in the Des Moines area sent us Facebook and Instagram messages asking if we had heard about it. I think the local news in Des Moines had picked up the story, and so it spread to us pretty quickly after that,” said Shawn Camp, IFS co-founder and executive director.
Phill was shot once in the abdomen and ran from the police officers, living on the lam for another four days while the IFS went through the logistics of rescuing him.
“[We found out] Saturday morning, and I think he was shot probably Friday afternoon,” added Jered Camp, IFS co-founder and president.
During this time, several residents had encounters with Phill, including when he was spotted on a viral Ring doorbell video.
Soon enough, a Facebook page was created for the injured buffalo, and Des Moines-based retailer RAYGUN started selling Phill-themed t-shirts. Now with an outpouring of support for the bovine, it was time for Phill to be safely captured and treated for his wound.
However, this proved to be more difficult than anticipated for the team at IFS, who had planned to travel to Des Moines themselves to rescue Phill.
“They say ‘Pleasant Hill,’ and I’m like, ‘Okay, country, yeah, we can do this.’ We know how to corral a cow,” Ms. Camp said. “But then soon after, we realized the cow was running through the city, and there wasn’t a whole lot that we could do in a bank parking lot and running around through neighborhoods to capture a water buffalo who was pretty scared.”
Instead, the Camps made calls and connections with the Pleasant Hill police and Phill’s owner. Ms. Camp said at the very least, they wanted to make sure the nonprofit was available as a resource to save Phill from being shot again, or from slaughter entirely.
Not only did the former owner agree to surrender Phill, but also the other two water buffalo on his farm. Before any more progress could be made, however, Phill still had to be caught.
With help from the Animal Rescue League of Iowa and the Blank Park Zoo — which assists in tranquilizing large animals within 40 miles of the zoo, Ms. Camp noted — Phill was safely sedated while roaming a creek bed on Aug. 27. He was taken to the Iowa State University Large Animal Hospital in Ames to be treated.
Veterinarians checked Phill via ultrasound for punctured lungs and signs of internal bleeding or peritonitis, but did not find anything concerning. In fact, Phill looked clinically normal, Mr. Camp said.
“They didn’t do any X-rays right away because they were afraid of him, because the news had said that he was really aggressive,” Mr. Camp said. “The initial vet that took care of him said, ‘Well, he’s just a young, scared animal that was just chased by people, by ATVs, by drones.’ Because he wasn’t showing any clinical signs, they wanted to give him a little bit of time to decompress there at the hospital. And then that’s when they went and did the the X-ray over a week later.”
The bullet in Phill’s abdomen was intact, and he was unharmed aside from the entry wound. A surgery to remove the bullet was ruled out because of its location inside his abdomen — like cows, buffalo have large digestive tracts with four stomachs — but because it was cased in lead, Phill will continue to have check-ups to rule out poisoning.
Almost two weeks after his viral escape, the vets and the Camps decided Phill was finally ready to live at the sanctuary. In a post to social media, IFS welcomed Phill home, where he was reunited with his buffalo companions, Sal and Jane, on Sept. 11.
Ms. Camp said Phill is a 1-year-old Italian Mediterranean buffalo: a domesticated breed bred in Europe for “mozzarella di bufala” cheese. No buffalo species are native to North America, though the North American bison is often colloquially reffered to as buffalo.
Phill himself was born in Kansas before being sold to the farm in Pleasant Hill for meat slaughter, Ms. Camp said.
Even before Phill came home, Ms. Camp said the sanctuary saw a deluge of support and donations from people around the country, but also from locals in Iowa who had never heard of the nonprofit. They raised over $25,000 to cover Phill’s medical bills within a matter of days, Mr. Camp said, and that last week’s “Sanctuary Stroll Sunday” was one of the busiest IFS had ever seen.
“It was wild,” Ms. Camp said. “There was so many people here that had never heard of us before, and Phil wasn’t even here yet. But they’re just like, ‘What is this place?’ And so people traveled from Des Moines, and I think a lot of people locally heard of us that hadn’t before.”
Mr. Camp said that Phill’s story was a “beacon of light” among so many political or negative headlines in the news. He said it was neat to help save a local celebrity that so many people care about, and who is much friendlier than initially thought.
Ms. Camp said Phill is not afraid of people at all, and that he loves getting treats and chin scratches.
“The community is what saved him. If people were just not commenting and not wagging their finger at the police officer that shot him, I mean, they would have shot him and killed him,” Ms. Camp said. “But because it became so viral, it saved his life. So now these people are invested in because they helped save him, so it’s pretty cool. He’s Iowa’s cow, Iowa’s buffalo.”
