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Wallaby goes walkabout in Berlin outback

The Local Germany
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Wallaby goes walkabout in Berlin outback
Photo: Gemeinde Nuthe-Urstromtal

A woman in a village south of Berlin was shocked to find a rather unusual visitor in her garden on Tuesday. But by the time police got there he'd already bounced.

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Yvonne Herrmann from Frankenförde in Brandenburg didn't believe her eyes at first as she looked into her garden early on Tuesday morning, reports the Märkische Allgemeine Zeitung (MAZ).

But there it was, what she thought was a kangaroo standing in the middle of her lawn.

“I thought she was taking the mick at first,” said her husband Ulf.

The police also thought they were being taken for a ride when the Herrmanns reported the unusual sighting.

And when their patrol car arrived at the scene, the mysterious marsupial had already disappeared into a nearby cornfield.

“We saw him again at around 10 o'clock and called the police back,” Herrmann told MAZ.

This time, along with three police officers, two vets turned up armed with tranquilizer guns.

“We needed five attempts and a pretty high dosage before we could knock it out,” said one of the vets. When the vets inspected the animal the identified it as an Australian Wallaby.

Maurice Radtke, a local council worker also came to help.

“I wanted to help the animal and ensure it was taken stress-free out of Frankenförde,” he said. “Such a big animal demands respect. Its strength is not to be underestimated.”

Together with the vets and police, Radtke was able to lift the wallaby into a a trailer. It was then taken to a nearby farm to be looked after by a "host family".

Radtke said authorities still have no idea where the animal came from.

But this isn't the first rogue marsupial sighting in Germany in recent months.

A kangaroo named "Zippe" escaped from a private zoo in Brandenburg in November and managed to dodge police and passersby for months until she was finally captured. But Zippe died shortly after she was found.

Another kangaroo was found bouncing around North-Rhine Westphalia last year and officials could not identify its owners.

Kangaroos and wallabies can legally be held as pets in Germany, providing the home has plenty of space for them to hop around in.

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