He had just finished a breeding session and was returning to the farm where he lives in western Maryland. But he apparently had other designs.

The bull, a 1,500-pound Black Angus known simply as No. 33, somehow managed to escape from a cattle trailer as it passed through Baltimore.

For the next three hours, the wayward bovine plodded past the city’s quintessential rowhouses, through a college campus and intersections, sending bemused onlookers scrambling to keep a safe distance.

Streets were blocked off as a police helicopter tracked the bull’s movements, first at Coppin State University and then in a nearby neighborhood where the tranquilized bull was finally muscled into the back of a car trailer with a ramp.

The Baltimore Police Department enlisted the help of the Maryland Zoo, which dispatched six people to wrangle the animal, who was returning to Hedgeapple Farm in Frederick, Md., when the jaunt occurred. Among them were a veterinarian, two vet technicians and Karl Kranz, the zoo’s chief operating officer.

“Our vet hit it with two darts,” Mr. Kranz said Wednesday night. “It started to get woozy. She had to dart it a third time.”

Not quite Pamplona, the Spanish town romanticized by Ernest Hemingway for its annual running of the bulls, Baltimore is no stranger to such escapades. In June, a pair of steers broke free from a slaughterhouse in the city, as has been the case several times in New York City, including one bull that Jon Stewart chauffeured to freedom.

No one was injured during Wednesday’s commotion in Baltimore, where the bull was brought to the Maryland Zoo after being corralled.

Scott Barao, the executive director of Hedgeapple Farm, said something like this has never happened in 30 years.

“It was just a perfect storm,” said Dr. Barao, whose biography on the farm’s website said he has a doctorate in beef cattle nutrition and management.

While the bull who went on the lam in West Baltimore did not have horns, animal handlers said he could have posed a danger to humans, particularly if he got spooked.

“Sometimes people get hurt,” Mr. Kranz said. “It could knock them down.”

Mr. Kranz said the bull was being kept at the zoo for observation.

“We’re just making sure that he wakes up from his anesthesia before he goes home,” he said.

Neil Vigdor is a breaking news reporter on the Express Desk. He previously covered Connecticut politics for the Hartford Courant. @gettinviggy • Facebook

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