Maybe the stranger on campus was just hoppin’ mad he couldn’t get a degree? When college students got a glimpse of the new visitor on campus they had some questions. As did the police and local park rangers. But they weren’t quiet expecting what they found wandering around the streets.
A wallaby. In Tennessee. The town of Harrogate and Lincoln Memorial University wasn’t quite ready to host this new guest. So the local police brought in the big guns – the park rangers. But first, they had to find a way to capture the cunning marsupial.
After the first sighting on campus, university officials made sure to let students know about their new visitor. “Campus wildlife alert! This morning, our campus had a surprise visitor — a Harrogate resident’s escaped pet wallaby! The unexpected guest was spotted bounding across campus and entered the woods behind Grant-Lee Hall,” the university said in a Facebook post.
The school, in a second Facebook post published after the animal was captured, said the unexpected visitor brought added joy to the campus. “Thank you wallaby for bounding in and bringing all the smiles to us today. You have captured the heart of all us Railsplitters,” Lincoln Memorial University said in its post.
The university’s spokesperson said that while the Claiborne County Sheriff’s Department was at the university, rangers from the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park and the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency were taking the lead on finding the wandering wallaby.
While wallabies are typically found in Australia, they are only allowed in the U.S. as pets, or at zoos, and the rules for pets are strict. Only a handful of states, according to Wikipedia, allow owning a wallaby as a pet.
The students also invested in finding out if the wallaby was captured. “I was actually in my 9am lecture this morning, and my friend goes, ‘Did you see the Facebook post that there’s a wallaby at Hearthside Bank across the road?’ And I said, ‘No way,'” said Madison Snedigar, a veterinary student at LMU. “It’s not every day you, obviously, get to see a wallaby.”
The surprisingly calm wallaby after finally being captured. Photo by WBIR
Park rangers, with help from local residents, were finally able to capture the wallaby. They later learned that his name was ‘BooBoo’ and had managed to escape from his home. “I was within, probably six or eight feet of it, and it had turned its back to me. So, that’s when I kind of rushed in and got my hands around it, and I thought I had a good grip on it. But boy, those things can kick,” said Andrew Thompson, one of the rangers who helped capture it.
Now, this is definitely one that I probably will not forget.”
Some professors even used the situation as a chance to teach their students. “I decided to just talk to the students that were there and talk about anesthesia, and the potential of us doing anesthesia. So, we had our medications ready,” said Dr. Paul Nader, a professor of wildlife zoo medicine and veterinary anatomy at LMU.
One of the biggest lessons for veterinary students at LMU on Wednesday — expect the unexpected. “I just feel like that’s kind of a normal day in veterinary medicine. You never know what you’re going to wake up to, or have to deal with the next day,” Snedigar said. Watch below for a look at this adventurous wallaby!
