‘How is this even possible?’ A kangaroo was just spotted hopping around the Redland
Iguanas, alligators, snakes, sure.
These critters are a common, almost everyday sight in South Florida.
But kangaroos?
Hmmm.
Local Instagram humor account Lifestyle Miami posted a quick video Tuesday of a little guy jumping around the Redland area of South Miami-Dade.
A woman shoots the clip from a car, along with a small child. You can hear them off camera speaking in Spanish.
“What is that?” asks the woman. “Did it escape from someone?”
“Un kangaroo! Wow!” answers the child.
The kangaroo is standing calmly in the road looking at another oncoming car. It then hops out of frame.
“Meanwhile in the Redlands,” reads the headline.
Many followers made jokes, like, saying the marsupial, indigenous to Australia, had come all the way from Down Under to get a milkshake from famed local stand Robert is Here.
Among the other comments:
“Miami wildlife game is untouchable.”
“Since when the [bleep] did we have kangaroos?”
“He got tired of the fires in Australia.”
“How is this even possible?”
It’s unclear where the kangaroo is from and how it ended up there. Perhaps it’s a pet that escaped from its owner’s home, but Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokeswoman Carrol Lyn Parrish told the Miami Herald that a check on permit holders does not list anyone that owns kangaroos in the area.
Another possibility is that the kangaroo escaped from Safari Edventure in Homestead, but the sanctuary did not respond to a request for comment to see if one was housed there.
We know it definitely didn’t jump away from Zoo Miami, on the western edge of Kendall, miles away. Spokeswoman Cindy Castelblanco told the Herald the animal is not theirs.
“My guess is that it got out of someone’s collection down there,” she wrote in an email.
This story was originally published February 5, 2020 at 11:48 AM.
