The sounds of splashing and voices echoing down Lick Creek, the small stream that meanders through the Vollintine-Evergreen neighborhood, alerted me to the sound of people wading past my house this morning.
I expected to find high school-aged teenagers playing hooky to try to sneak into the Memphis Zoo, but what I saw when I looked over the embankment was two zoo employees wearing rubber boots and shining a flashlight into a concrete-covered section of the creek.
“Are you looking for someone?” I asked, thinking I was just being a bit of a smart aleck.
“A kangaroo escaped,” one employee told me. The other person turned back to the creek and spoke to someone via a walkie talkie. I didn’t hear the entire exchange, but I did catch “didn’t make it this far,” apparently referring to the fugitive marsupial.
“We haven’t seen a kangaroo,” the first employee told me, “but we did see a beaver. It was this big.” He held his hands about three feet apart.
Lick Creek runs beneath the zoo and through Midtown Memphis, and I often see schools of small fish flitting through the shallow water. Ducks paddle along the creek, and I’ve seen a hawk hunt along the creek by day. That’s on a “normal” day though, when the water flows slowly and placidly. Yesterday, Memphis was hit by severe thunderstorms, high winds, and tornado conditions, and the waters of the creek rose to the height of its banks. One wonders if kangaroos can swim.
“We had trees down here and there, but our KangaZoo flooded really bad,” said Jessica Faulk with the zoo, when I reached out for comment.
Because of the storm, the zoo staff had team members relocate the kangaroos from their habit and to the animal hospital where they were quarantined. The zoo has three wallabies they had not yet announced, as the animals were still getting accustomed to the environment. When the zoo staff did a head count after the relocation process, they realized something was wrong.
It wasn’t a missing kangaroo — it was a fugitive wallaby.
“We had one wallaby missing,” she said. “They’re assuming it’s in Overton Park somewhere.”
She continued. “Our teams have been actively searching for him all morning. As far as we know, he’s alive and well and eating grass on the golf course.”
In a post to their social media page, the zoo said this: “Memphis Police Department is helping the search for the missing wallaby. If anyone spots the wallaby, please report it by calling the Memphis Zoo at 901-333-6500. Please include the location and time of the sighting in your message. Wallabies are smaller in stature than kangaroos. They are gentle animals … If spotted, please do not approach, and immediately call the number above.”
We will update this story as more becomes known.