A wallaby running around isn’t something you’d normally see in the middle of Ohio.
Kipper the wallaby got loose near Sinclair Community College in Dayton on Friday morning, WHIO reported.
He’s owned by the school’s chair of veterinary technology, Carolyn Reno, who brings Kipper to the college when high school students interested in her program visit.
But despite repeated trips to the campus, Kipper did something he had never done before: he skipped out.
“(I) turned around to close the car, and he jumped up and broke apart his kennel and he took off,” Reno told WHIO.
He did stop a couple of times, but “decided it was much more fun to run.”
Kipper’s freedom came to an end about an hour and 20 minutes after his daring escape.
Reno said he’s fine.
“He’s okay, he’s very nervous. He needs to calm down a little bit, but he is doing very well, and we are just so happy to get him back,” she said.
Sinclair police chief Michael Coss said of the call, “add that to the list of ‘haven’t dealt with that before.”
A wallaby is a small to medium-sized marsupial, according to National Geographic.
They can be 12 to 41 inches tall with a powerful tail that can measure from 10 to 29 inches.
They are herbivores, eating mostly grasses, but also plants.
Several variations of wallabies are endangered, near threatened or vulnerable to extinction, Bush Heritage Australia said. Other species have gone extinct, such as the Eastern Hare Wallaby and Crescent Nailtail Wallaby.
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