Wallaby Madness
Wallabies are overrunning Wichita, Kansas! Ok, not exactly overrunning it. There's one - a Pygmy Tammar wallaby. But Wichita's city government is putting their foot down - hard on a local man who owns "Skippy".
Wallabies, those miniature kangaroo-like marsupials that are both speedy and (if tame) snuggly, might soon be outlawed inside Wichita city limits.
And if you're looking for someone to blame, look to Skippy, the 10-month-old wallaby who took a bold leap last month, prompting news stories and a brief but intense search.
After going missing for 20 hours, Skippy was found a half-block away from home, trying to get some bread that people were tossing to ducks in southwest Wichita.
It was a cute story, until an animal control officer went to Joe Freed's home and gave him a ticket for having an exotic animal.
"I was dumbfounded," said Freed, who had bought Skippy for $1,000 in Illinois after checking state and local laws.
The officer gave Freed 24 hours to get Skippy out of town, which is standard for exotic animals.
So Freed took the Tammar wallaby to a friend's place in Newton, driving up there every day to bottle feed the baby animal. Then Freed said he talked a judge into letting Skippy come home, since Wichita's animal ordinance was rather vague.
The law doesn't address marsupials, but it does say residents are allowed to have "small rodents such as gerbils, rats, mice, hamsters, guinea pigs, chinchillas, mink, nutria and similar fur-bearing mammals."
Now we here at Blue Crab Boulevard have long been warning of the dangers of the Animal Uprising™. But it seems to us that so long as Freed can keep the little miscreant contained, there really isn't a problem. After all he makes an excellent point:
"A lot of things are exotic to Kansas people," he said. "I can't have a wallaby — but I can have a teenage son?"
Frankly, most teenage boys belong in a cage until they are old enough to know better. Ask any parent.
By Joe Freed, Tuesday, 18 September , 2007 @ 3:09 pm
Wow, I couldn’t have said it better myself.
BTW, Skippy says thanks for the support