The officer managed to save the beast from a garden pond, before it hopped away from him repeatedly
In Paterswolde (Gemeente Tynaarlo), in the northern part of Drenthe, an officer has managed to rescue an escaped wallaby from a pond. Displaying very little gratitude, the marsupial escaped from the officer three times over the course of the rescue. As reported by the Asser Courant today.
Police officer Gerwin Haverkamp of the Tynaarlo police sometimes has to free or pursue a cow or sheep, but when a report came in that a kangaroo was walking through Paterswolde, “I asked if the man who made the report was drunk.”
The report turned out to be true: a small kangaroo had hopped into a garden in Paterswolde on Sunday morning. “When I arrived at the house I saw the resident looking into the garden. I thought then, the wallaby would be there, ”says Haverkamp. The resident confirmed that the animal had fallen into her pond.
And so the officer started a special rescue: “I tried to get wallaby out of the pond, but you don’t know if such a beast bites. He didn’t in the end, but he was stronger than me. He kicked hard.”
Officer Haverkamp finally succeeded in freeing the animal with a rope. “We always have a rope in the car. I tied that around the chest of the animal so that I could at least keep his head above water. At one point he got his legs on the side, then I was able to pull him out of the pond. ”
But the tale was not finished with that: the animal escaped again. “The resident suggested putting a blanket over the wallaby so that he might calm down a bit. Then he fled into the garden again”, says the officer.
Fortunately, the animal ambulance was also on site quickly with a large safety net, but the animal also managed to escape from that. The wallaby managed to escape three times in one day. “It seems that he still wanted to go out into the wide world,” says Haverkamp.
After a re-group by the animal ambulance, the wallaby really could not go anywhere. The animal’s owner eventually came to collect him from the net. The animal did not come from a zoo or children’s farm, but from a backyard in Paterswolde: “There he jumped over a fence or hedge of two and a half meters,” says Haverkamp. “The owner has the wallaby as a pet. Or well, as a garden animal. ”
Image via PxFuel. License-free.
