A driver in Cornwall has described the moment he spotted a wallaby hopping along a street in a town. Pasty shop owner Scot Weller was driving into Liskeard when he initially thought the animal ahead was a dog.
Mr Weller said the animal was hopping along the road in front of him as he drove to work. Feeling protective, he decided to follow it because there were several cars behind him and he was worried it could be hit.
Realisation it was a wallaby
The animal then moved onto the pavement and stopped, and it was only then that Mr Weller realised it was in fact a wallaby. He said: "I realised it was hopping and that it was a wallaby on the loose."
Scot, owner of Original Cornish Pasties, pulled up alongside the escaped marsupial and said: "Hello, you're not from around here, are you?" A few seconds later, the animal disappeared down a side road towards the local Co-op.
Concern for the animal
"It was a bit sad that he was out there on his own, as there can't have been much for it to eat because of the heatwave we've been having," Scot said. "I just thought, 'Poor thing, he's lost.'"
He reported the sighting to police via 101, although the call handler initially had some trouble understanding what he was reporting. He said: "I told her, 'There's a wallaby hopping up the street,' and she replied, 'The Australian animal, like a small kangaroo? Right, OK.'"
Police response and other sightings
The wallaby has reportedly been sighted elsewhere in Liskeard. A member of staff at the leisure centre is also said to have spotted it at the weekend in the secondary school playing fields.
A Devon and Cornwall Police spokesperson said the animal had disappeared by the time officers arrived. They said: "We were called to a report of a wallaby seen on Dean Street, Liskeard, shortly before 6am today, August 24. Officers carried out an area search but did not locate the animal."
Wallabies are an increasingly common sight in the British countryside, with a growing number of the marsupials spotted in fields, grasslands and woods across the country. Last month, a wallaby was spotted by a driver in north Devon - the latest sighting of an animal thought to have been roaming the county for at least three years.
Danny Reynolds, a partner at Exmoor Zoo, said staff have known about the mysterious wallaby for years. He told Devon Live: "As far I'm aware, we are not missing a wallaby. But we do know about this one. It's been living in the wild for about three years.
"We've made numerous attempts to capture it and every single time, even with a team of 15 people, it's beaten us. You see it once and then you don't see it again for months. It's a bit like the Exmoor Beast, except this one poses for the occasional photo."
Breeding populations have previously been found in the Peak District and the Scottish islands, with the creatures well suited to the rugged, hilly terrain. Many of those currently around are thought to have escaped zoos or private collections, though there have been a few deliberate introductions over the past few decades.
