Kangaroos? In Palmyra??

One of the great things about my job is that I have no idea what the day holds when I go out the back door and into the early morning darkness. This morning’s surprise was finding out that a couple kangaroos may have gotten loose in Palmyra somehow.  The Warner Brothers cartoon where Sylvester is confronted with an escaped kangaroo he determines to be a giant, hopping mouse came to mind pretty fast.

As of this writing, authorities haven’t been successful in locating the out of place critters. Maybe there was an escape and the ‘Roos were successfully corralled by their owner before things got out of hand.

Our own Dave Lee pointed out in a blog post on the KICK FM website a while back that he saw a mountain lion near Seehorn in western Illinois a while back. I’d say that Dave is as credible as anyone.

Mountain lions are native to the area and we’ve had some confirmed reports in northeast Missouri in recent years. I have relatives in Colorado Springs and news of native animals in the middle of  The Springs isn’t unusual. I came across a photo of a moose sauntering down the streets near the Patty Jewett Golf Course a few years back. There are occasional reports of bear tracks in their city parks.

Non native animals on the loose in this area aren't unheard of.  During the Flood of ’93, several Chinese Monkeys escaped from an exotic animal breeder in Adams County. These are monkeys native to relatively cool climates in China and Japan. A few years later my mom saw a monkey moving from treetop to treetop on some property we own north of Quincy. A couple months later, I saw tree branches moving unnaturally and then saw what can only be a monkey climbing in a tree. A couple days later, I asked Sheriff Nall if he’d heard anything like that and he confirmed the escape and that there were occasional sightings.  I’ve also heard simian chattering in the trees up there from time to time—including last summer.