Loose Kangaroo found near Kansas City
BONNER SPRINGS, Kan. — Police have located the owners of a young kangaroo after they believe a driver hit the animal on a Kansas City-area interstate Wednesday night.
Officers from the Bonner Springs and Edwardsville police departments found the injured kangaroo hiding in tall grass near Interstate 435 and Kansas Highway 32 in Kansas City, Kansas, around 10:30 p.m. Wednesday. Police originally believed the animal was a wallaby, but when the owner came forward, they clarified that it was a young kangaroo.
The owner said the kangaroo, named Star, jumped out of the window of his car.
Pictures provided by Bonner Springs police show the kangaroo with numerous cuts and injuries.
“It was laying down and not very mobile from the time I showed up, I know when Edwardsville first got there it was on the opposite side of the highway, so it had crossed over three lanes of traffic to get to the median. But once I got there the capture went pretty smoothly,” Kendra Anthony, Bonner Springs Animal Control Officer, said.
The officers transported the animal to the police station and gave it a bed to sleep in overnight.
Edwardsville police said Thursday morning they located the owners. Officials said the kangaroo escaped from a mobile petting zoo.
“The kangaroo is legally owned by the petting zoo within the regulations that the state of Missouri has for it because I don’t see anything online that says this operation is operating in violation of anything,” Captain Mike Krause, Bonner Springs Police, said.
Kangaroos are native to Australia, nearly 10,000 miles from where police found this one.
While rare in the Kansas City area, this isn’t the first time police have responded to a roaming exotic animal. In 2014, a wallaby escaped from its owners’ backyard in Olathe and bounced down a neighborhood street.
In 2021, a camel that escaped from a live nativity scene roamed loose for hours before Bonner Springs officers captured it.
Another wallaby ended up at the Kansas City Zoo in 2011 after it wandered away from home and onto the property at a Northland retirement center on Thanksgiving.