A Kangaroo In Texas: Little Joey Escapes
MIDLAND, Texas — Dispatchers were in disbelief late Tuesday when they took 911 calls about a kangaroo ambling down a rural road.
“It looks like a kangaroo to me tell you the truth!" a caller said.
"I don’t think there are any kangaroos," the dispatcher said.
"I’m telling ya’."
"You say it’s hopping around?"
"Bouncing around."
"It’s probably a deer," the dispatcher said.
It wasn’t, as Sheriff Gary Painter explained.
“The dispatcher called me and said, ‘Sheriff, we got a report of a kangaroo running loose in the county,' and I said 'a what?' She said a kangaroo. I said ‘naw, that’s bull, someone’s pulling your leg.' She said, ‘no we’ve had three calls on it, really!'”
A second caller dialed 911.
“A kangaroo just crossed the road, I almost ran over it," he said.
Painter said everyone’s asking the same questions.
"Where in the world did a kangaroo come from? How in the world did it get to Midland County. And how did it get loose?” he said.
The animal named Little Joey simply hopped away from its owner. But the owner is also credited with playing a role in the capturing and corralling of the kangaroo by offering it a treat after deputies arrived.
Painter says one deputy is injured. He says it doesn't look serious.
“He kind of pull a hamstring, got something wrong with his leg, and he said, 'I was gonna put in a workman’s comp about getting attacked by a kangaroo, but I think I’ll just wait,'" the sheriff chuckled.
The deputy is fine, the kangaroo’s is in a pen. All’s well that ends well. But callers to 911 weren't hallucinating.
