Three bison escaped from a Connecticut farm this week and four bison came back.
The trio busted out of the family-owned 3B Ranch in North Branford on Sunday — and one of the animals was pregnant and gave birth during their multi-day excursion, CT Insider reported.
“What we’ve been kind of saying was that the bison went on maternity leave,” Amanda Maresca, whose family owns the farm, told the newspaper.
The Guilford Police Department announced on Facebook Wednesday that the bison had “been located and are back home on the range.”
Maresca said that the group of bison knocked down their enclosure’s wire fence on Sunday and traveled roughly six miles to the town of Guilford.
The bison returned Tuesday night on their own with the baby in tow, she said.
Maresca first learned about the escape from a friend as locals began posting pictures of the bison parading throughout the Connecticut countryside.
“One of my girlfriends had sent me a text and was like ‘I think everybody’s talking about your buffalo,’” she said. “A lot of people were sharing it and talking about it.”
Police urged the public to avoid the bison as the roamed, warning they could be “feisty.”
“These fluffernators had a few eventful days out, meeting and greeting the locals, learning about the rules of the road (everyone knows buffalo have the right of way at every intersection now), and finally they decided that it was time to take a nap in the comforts of their own pasture,” police said in a Facebook post.
The 80-acre 3B Ranch has been home to some 15 bison for more than a dozen years — and this is not their first breakout.
In a previous incident, farm workers were able to lure the bison back into their enclosure by smearing molasses on trees to make a trail for them to follow, Maresca told the paper.
Maresca said she was relieved when the bison sauntered back to the ranch late Sunday.
“It was honestly late at night. It’s really quiet up on the farm neighbor-wise, so we had left the gate open for them to kind of come back, and honestly they just make their way back,” she said. “We were glad, but we knew that they would come back. We really weren’t too worried.”
She is asking the public’s help to give the baby bison a name.