Women come eye-to-eye with escaped wallaby in Noord-Brabant village
Three women in the Noord-Brabant town of Best came across a very strange road user on their way home from the movies. A huge wallaby hopped in front of their car for quite a distance before stopping, staring at them, and then shifting to the bike path, driver Sylvia van der Donk told Omroep Brabant. The wallaby escaped from the BestZoo on Thursday. It’s also been spotted in Asten and Neerkant and has, so far, escaped capture.
Sylvia and her friends Patricia and Elles were at the movies in Veghel and were driving home on Sonseweg in Best when they suddenly noticed “something” in the middle of the road.
“I was still thinking about Halloween. Or a deer. We were getting closer. I stopped and turned on the hazard lights. My friend started filming.” They were very shocked to realize that they were looking at a wallaby. Sylvia was terrified the animal would jump on her car. “He came towards us. I only have a Swift. Then my car would have been a total loss. And then the animal would have been injured or dead.”
Sylvia started driving at a walking pace and flashing her high beams, hoping to convince the animal to move aside. “But he just sat still on the road. He looked at me. I stopped too. Then he started hopping again,” she said. “He was hopping at 25 kilometers per hour.”
Her friends called the police. “They thought we had been drinking. They didn’t believe it at all. And, of course, we were a bit giggly because you don’t expect this. But I hadn’t been drinking.”
The wallaby eventually hopped onto the bike path and disappeared. Syliva called BestZoo the next day. “They said they just couldn’t catch him. A tranquilizer dart wouldn’t work for ten minutes. They said I should have grabbed him by his tail. But I didn’t grab anything, because he was really big.”
