'It Was A Fun Night': Loose Wallaby In Montrose County Gives Emergency Responders, Good Samaritans A Good Laugh

MONTROSE COUNTY, Colo. (CBS4) - A wallaby on the loose was the last thing Sgt. Charles Searcy with the Montrose County Sheriff's Office expected to respond to Thursday night, July 8. Nonetheless, he and a state patrol officer, as well as a couple of good Samaritans, and the wallaby's owner, chased the hopping marsupial for about 45 minutes that night before he finally jumped safely back home to his proper enclosure.

A wallaby is a small animal in the kangaroo family, native to Australia.

A couple driving by happened to notice the wallaby on the side of Jay Jay Road, just north of Montrose. They called a non-emergency dispatch line for help.

"Um, yeah, there's a kangaroo loose on Jay Jay Road," the passerby told dispatch. "Or, a wallaby, it's much smaller than a kangaroo, I would guess wallaby... not a prank call, I swear to God I'm looking right at it."

The dispatcher laughed a little, responding, "um, okay... that's just not something that we get every day."

Sgt. Searcy tells CBS4 he didn't believe it at first.

"You know, we don't have kangaroos here, we don't have wallabies here, so (I'm thinking) are there drugs involved, somebody's seeing something, we're going to a drug call, somebody's having hallucinations," Searcy recalled. "So, when I first got there, I was even skeptical when I got out of the truck, and the reporting party came and right away was like, 'here's a picture of it, we're not crazy,' and then I actually saw it, and I was like, 'wow, okay.'"

Sgt. Searcy says the wallaby is a legal pet of a nearby resident, and he had somehow gotten out of a fenced-in yard. The wallaby's owner eventually found the responding officers and the good samaritans, and helped coax him back home.

"It was a fun night," Searcy said. "We don't get a whole lot of humor, and things where we can laugh it off, and still today, I went in to work for a little bit this morning, and the jokes kept coming, so I'm sure I won't hear the end of it for a while."

Searcy says once they got the animal back safe and sound, he looked around at its enclosure and living conditions, and said there were no signs of neglect or mistreatment of the animal.

Watch the video above to see the full interview with Sgt. Searcy about the incident.