The “llama on the loose” escapade, as the Fairfax County Police Department called its effort to capture Kolby, unfolded Sunday night. Usually, officers have to deal with “livestock or an occasional emu that’s gotten loose,” said Sgt. Siobhan Chase of the animal protection unit. “But this is the first time we’ve had to chase a llama.”

Just before 11 p.m., the department had gotten a call from a motorist about an animal — possibly a llama — darting across the road and causing drivers to slam on their brakes along the northbound side of the Fairfax County Parkway near Popes Head Road.

One of the department’s animal protection officers, Sarah Paisley, was driving along that same stretch and noticed a traffic backup. She was wrapping up her shift and headed to the county’s animal shelter to drop off a rescued bird in a cage in her back seat. Another police officer called Paisley and asked, “Do you see a llama?”

Yes, Paisley answered. She’d seen the black-colored llama just seconds before, standing in the median. So she quickly parked her vehicle on the roadside, grabbed a 4-foot-long dog leash, and started to run after it. She tried to lasso it but with no luck and it kept running fast and in circles.

“It would run in short bursts,” Chase said, “and then stop and then run again like a dog that doesn’t want to be caught.”

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By then, her colleagues headed to the scene and a police supervisor ordered officers in the area to shut down the four lanes of the parkway. They worried the llama’s frantic running — and dark-colored fur — would cause it to get hit by a car.

“It was solid black, and you couldn’t see it in the dark,” Chase said.

Officers lost site of the runaway llama. But the police department’s helicopter had heard of the chase on the radio and was in the area as it finished up another incident. Its crew members offered to fly over and use infrared cameras to help.

Within a few minutes, they had a llama sighting.

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Kolby had veered off the highway, cut through a wooded area and landed in the backyard of a large home. In a police department video, a person on the helicopter said, “This is Fairfax 1. We’re overhead. We got the llama. Stand by for an address.”

On the ground, officers quickly arrived and tried to chase the llama, but it ran through the yard and into an area of trees. They attempted to corral it near a fence. “Oh, so close,” one helicopter crew member said.

“There you go,” another person said from the chopper, as the ground crew narrowed in on Kolby.

But “nope,” the person said. “He’s gone.”

On the ground, one of the officers fretted that Kolby might spit on her, deploying llamas’s rotten-grass-smelling defense mechanism. Kolby refrained.

Twenty is up in years for a llama, and by now, animal protection officers could tell Kolby was showing her age. She would run, then slow down, then run again.

Then, as she ran past Paisley, Paisley reached out and bear-hugged her. With her arms around the llama’s neck, Paisley held on to her chest as two other officers came and jumped in to help hold the creature. They got their dog leash around her neck — a horse harness was too big — and another rope on her back side.

From the helicopter, the crew erupted in cheers and laughs.

“There you go,” one person said. “[She’s] got him.”

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Caught in the home’s backyard, Kolby was still spooked by the bright Christmas lights of the house so the homeowner brought out a blanket that the officers put over her head as they guided her to a waiting trailer.

By midnight, officers dropped Kolby off at the county’s animal shelter barn, where she got hay and water for the night. She was examined the next day, found to be fine and went to her Fairfax home Tuesday, said Reasa Currier, the animal shelter director.

In the end, Kolby hadn’t gone far — only about a quarter of a mile from home. Officials said they were not sure how Kolby escaped. Her owner did not return calls for comment.

Currier believes Kolby wanted “a wild adventure” in her later years. “We’re just so happy that Kolby and her dad are back together,” she said.

“She’s a spunky, geriatric lady,” said Chase, the police department’s animal protection supervisor. “And it all probably wore her out.”

This story had been updated with details about the llama’s capture.