Escaped wallaroo creates a hullabaloo in Park City

PARK CITY — Alison Weyher was watching the sunrise from her back porch early one morning in mid-July when she spotted an odd-looking creature moving around in the grassy field behind her house in the Silver Creek area outside Park City.

Weyher said she didn't have her glasses on, so it was difficult at first to identify the creature in the distance.

"I thought it was a sandhill crane," she said. "Then I saw it hop."

The strange animal was a wallaroo, a large, dark-gray kangaroo, that had escaped from a neighbor's yard where it is kept as a pet. The wallaroo escaped in late June and hopped through the Snyderville Basin area, shocking residents and spooking livestock for about three weeks until it was captured the morning of July 13 after Weyher called Summit County Animal Control, county officials said.

The wallaroo is owned by local resident Greg Pack, who keeps a variety of exotic animals at his home. Along with several wallaroos, the Packs keep emus, goats, a camel, an exotic deer and horses on their property. The animals are kept in cages and corrals that surround their home, barn and outbuildings. Pack declined several requests for comment on the incident.

Weyher said she had heard about a loose kangaroo in the area from neighbors who had spotted the wallaroo numerous times after its escape.

Bob Bates, director of county animal control, said that after he lured the wallaroo into a corral in Weyher's back yard, a caretaker for the Pack family retrieved the animal. Bates said he felt relieved the wallaroo was no longer roaming the area without decent access to food and water.

"It was hot and stressed," he said.

Neighbors said the capture drew quite a crowd. Jane Coleman, who lives near the Packs, said the capture was an odd sight. After the wallaroo was lured into a wooden corral, the caretaker came and grabbed the animal as it hopped into the air and covered it with a blanket before putting it in the car and driving away, she said.

Bates said Greg Pack was on vacation in California at the time and had been trying to capture the animal for some time before he left town. But the tall grass and hidden gullies of the area probably made finding the animal difficult.

Coleman said neighbors are less than impressed with the animals Pack keeps. She said the animals aren't used for any practical purpose and are kept in poorly built facilities.

"If people are going to have animals like that, they should have nice places to keep them," she said. "He doesn't do anything with them. They just sit in a cage."

Bates said resident Carla Davis had complained that the wallaroo spooked her horse one night while the Australian animal was loose, causing the horse to panic and injure its leg.