Four zebras broke free on a highway. A rodeo clown stepped in.

Four zebras escaped from a trailer on a highway exit in Washington on Sunday, leading dozens of residents, police officers and volunteers to join in an effort to corral them.

Among them was a person with particular expertise in wrangling loose animals: David Danton, of Mount Vernon, Washington, who worked for nearly 15 years as a rodeo clown and rodeo bullfighter.

He and his wife, Julie Danton, had been driving home from a cattle drive in Eastern Washington when they stopped to help the police and neighbors capture the zebras in North Bend, Washington.

“It was kind of divine intervention – we happened to be in the exact spot and had the knowledge,” Julie Danton said.

David Danton said he built some makeshift gates out of rope, metal panels and a garden hose, and got two of the zebras to run into a pen on a horse farm. Then, he said, he helped build an “alleyway” out of metal panels to usher the zebras into a large trailer.

“It worked out as well as it possibly could have,” Danton said. “It’s just about being quiet, working them gentle and not getting excited.”

Still, he said, “Nobody trains you for wrangling zebras.”

The zebras were being transported to Montana on Sunday afternoon, when the driver who was hauling them stopped to secure their trailer on an exit off Interstate 90 in North Bend, said Trooper Rick Johnson of the Washington State Patrol.

It’s not clear where the zebras were coming from or where, precisely, they were headed, Johnson said. But somehow, he said, the zebras got loose.

As the animals began scampering through traffic and onto residential streets, dozens of police officers and neighbors, along with the Dantons, rushed to the scene.

“Animal control showed up to help, police showed up, and every neighbor showed up to help – or just look at the zebras – because it’s not every day you get zebras in your neighborhood,” said Megan Dammann, a North Bend resident who runs a kennel-free dog boarding and doggy day care business.

She said she raced to the area after seeing a post about the zebras on a community Facebook page. While the Dantons helped corral two of the zebras on a horse farm, residents nearby helped shoo a third zebra into a fenced-in yard and then shut the gate, Dammann said.

“It was kind of a fabulous group effort, which is what you do here,” Dammann said, whether the lost animal in question is a dog, a cat or a zebra. “In North Bend, that’s what you do.”

Whitney Blomquist ran to her front porch after seeing the zebras on her security camera. Three were outside her home, she said, wandering near an RV.

“They looked right at me and walked right toward me,” Blomquist said. “You’d think you’d have to go to an African safari to be with zebras and here I am standing on my front porch, and they’re 10 feet away from me. It was just insane.”

As of Sunday, Johnson said, one zebra was still on the loose. It was not clear Monday if it had been captured.

Blomquist said she was keeping her eyes open.

“I keep looking at my cameras every time they go off,” she said. “We’re just aware it’s out there.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.