Where’s Wallie?
Posted by: Loren Coleman on January 23rd, 2007
“Residents report wallaby on the loose in eastern Pa. town”, according to the Centre Daily Times, published in Centre County, Pennsylvania.
In Fleetwood, Pennsylvania, the locals are asking “Where’s the wallaby?”
That’s what officials at the Berks County Humane Society are wondering after residents began seeing a foreign creature hopping around town.
The accounts came in on Monday, January 22, 2007.
The agency received its first report of a wallaby sighting on Monday from a man who had seen the animal in his backyard over the weekend.
No one has come forward missing a pet and 20 miles away, at the Lehigh Valley Zoo, the officials there said they aren’t missing a wallaby.
But as opposed to the old maxim – “it escaped from a circus train wreck” – there’s a new explanation there is a new one that’s beginning to hop forward:
The animal might have been bought on the Internet as a pet, said humane society officer Dylan Heckart.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Did any one check with Clide Peeling at Reptile Land on rt 15 south of Williamsport?
Bought on the net?
What did it get emailed to someone?
Because there should be records of any such animal being sold and shipped.
Sounds like someone is just realizing that traveling circuses pretty much disappeared years ago so they need a new line of bs.
There aren’t necessarily any records at all when animals are bought and sold “on the net” or anywhere else.
You can’t buy or sell animals on eBay (well, except for fish), but the internet is the perfect message board. Google almost any animal you can think of, and you can find someone online who is selling it. Arrangements can be made online, and animals and cash can change hands, with no shipping whatsoever involved. All it takes is either a buyer or a seller willing to travel.
Here is an article from my customs law blog about illegal wallaby smuggling from Mexico to Texas. Clearly, there is a market for these animals.
they have a video of it now for anyone who is interested.
Link Below:
http://wfmz.com/view/?id=52641
Yeah, I would say the net is a haven for illegal trading of exotic animals. Don’t expect any records if the people involved did not want records to be found. There are very few regulations and policing of these kinds of things on the net and I have read of many instances of illegal animal smuggling rings working off the internet. It’s really sad to me that this is going on, but as long as there is a market for these animals and people are willing to pay, there are going to be others there to fill the demand.
Saw this on the Philadelphia news (NBC 10) the other day. My question is why the channel chose to show stock footage of what appeared to be an albino wallaby. Wallabies aren’t white, are they? At least none of the ones I’ve ever seen in captivity or in nature documentaries have been…
Wow, I made Cryptomundo. Mr. Coleman, I’m honored.