Wisconsin ‘Roo Killed

As my recent posting on the sightings of Minnesota kangaroos noted, Midwestern encounters with cryptid ‘roos are more frequent than most people think.

Now comes word that a 50 pound kangaroo was killed in rural Mauston, Wisconsin, on December 7th, by a truck driven by Ralph Hamm. And here’s the photographic proof. It had jumped out in front of Hamm’s truck in his driveway, but he could not stop.

The Wisconsin State Journal noted that "kangaroos hopping around southern Wisconsin are becoming an annual occurrence. Last winter, a 130-pound kangaroo eluded Iowa County authorities for two days until he was finally corralled in a horsebarn on a farm south of Dodgeville."

The locals and the paper soberly have concluded: "Where the wayward marsupials are coming from is a mystery. "

Despite a lack of local sightings, Hamm said he backtracked and found that the kangaroo had apparently been living under a culvert on his property. The culvert area had a lot of prints and a line where the kangaroo dragged his tail.

Hamm is thinking about making a taxidermy mount of his kangaroo, while the Dodgeville kangaroo, nicknamed "Roo," is a live attraction at the Vilas Zoo in Madison.

Reports of cryptid kangaroos in Wisconsin, especially during the classic flap of 1978, are chronicled, in depth, in Mysterious America.

As far as the "name game" (see Mysterious America, Chapter 22, "The Name Game,") goes, Hamm is a name I’ve run across before. One specific strange sighting took place on September 19, 1970, near Pana, Illinois, to firefighter A. V. Hamm, who told me a gray tannish pumalike animal appeared to fall out of the sky or leap gracefully over a bunch of bushes near the path of his car.

Photo credit: Ralph Hamm – Published by Cryptomundo for educational and research purposes.

Loren Coleman 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.

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