'Not something we see everyday': Wallaby on loose in Colorado

A wallaby on the loose was the last thing Sgt Charles Searcy with the Montrose County Sheriff's Office in Colorado expected to respond to.

Nonetheless, he and a state patrol officer, as well as a couple of good Samaritans, and the wallaby's owner, chased the hopping marsupial for about 45 minutes on the night of Thursday, July 8.

Finally it jumped safely back home to his proper enclosure.

A couple driving by happened to notice the wallaby on the side of Jay Jay Road, just north of Montrose. They called a non-emergency dispatch line for help.

READ MORE: 'Utter shock': New study shows kangaroos can communicate with humans

"Um, yeah, there's a kangaroo loose on Jay Jay Road," the passerby told dispatch. "Or, a wallaby, it's much smaller than a kangaroo, I would guess wallaby… not a prank call, I swear to god I'm looking right at it."

The dispatcher laughed a little, responding, "um, okay… that's just not something that we get every day."

Sgt Searcy tells CBS4 he didn't believe it at first.

"You know, we don't have kangaroos here, we don't have wallabies here, so (I'm thinking) are there drugs involved, somebody's seeing something, we're going to a drug call, somebody's having hallucinations," Sgt Searcy recalled.

"So, when I first got there, I was even skeptical when I got out of the truck, and the reporting party came and right away was like, 'here's a picture of it, we're not crazy,' and then I actually saw it, and I was like, 'wow, okay.'"

READ MORE: Wallaby rescued after 6km ocean swim

Sgt Searcy says the wallaby is a legal pet of a nearby resident, and he had somehow gotten out of a fenced-in yard.

The wallaby's owner eventually found the responding officers and the good Samaritans, and helped coax him back home.

"It was a fun night," Sgt Searcy said.

"We don't get a whole lot of humour, and things where we can laugh it off, and still today, I went in to work for a little bit this morning, and the jokes kept coming, so I'm sure I won't hear the end of it for a while."

Sgt Searcy says once they got the animal back safe and sound, he looked around at its enclosure and living conditions, and said there were no signs of neglect or mistreatment of the animal.