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Wallaby goes walkabout in Canada

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-11-03 09:23

OTTAWA  – An intrepid wallaby has escaped from its pen at an exotic zoo and gone on an 80-kilometer (50-mile) walkabout across eastern Canada where he remained on the lam Friday, zookeepers said.

A Bennett's wallaby baby and its mother are pictured at the Amneville zoo, eastern France, in April 2008. An intrepid wallaby has escaped from its pen at an exotic zoo and gone on an 80-kilometer (50-mile) walkabout across eastern Canada where he remained on the lam Friday, zookeepers said. [Agencies]

Wendell, a three-year-old Bennett's Red Necked wallaby, was reported missing on Wednesday after a storm toppled a tree which destroyed the animal's pen at a facility near the capital Ottawa.

The animal, native to eastern Australia, and three others as well as a kangaroo, "just hopped out of their broken enclosure," Carla Saunders, co-owner of Saunders Country Critters and Garden Centre said.

But only Wendell strayed very far, she said. Indeed, Wendell was last spotted on Thursday evening 80 kilometers (50 miles) southwest of the Kemptville, Ontario zoo.

"He's covered a lot of territory and crossed a major highway," she said.

Wallabies are not well-adapted to Canada's colder weather, "but Wendell's a bit chunky because he was well-fed, and there's a lot of leaves for food and snow for water for him" in Canada's outback, she said.

But Saunders expressed worry that Wendell is stressed, and may succumb to predators such as coyotes and wolves.

As well, the wallaby's last tracks showed it was now traveling on all four paws, instead of hopping on its two hind legs, indicating it is tired, she said.

Saunders urged anyone who spots Wendell to grab him by the tail and stuff him in a pillow case. To the wallaby -- a marsupial closely related to a kangaroo -- it would feel like his mother's pouch.