After African snakes and deer, a surprising new animal has appeared in Mormal Forest, near Aulnoye-Aymeries in the North. The video went viral on Facebook on Sunday August 21: we see a wallaby, an animal resembling a small kangaroo, jumping on both sides of a road.
Bonnie’s owner wanted her to give birth to a baby Clyde
A motorist couple is at the origin of this discovery, around 3 am. The driver opens the window, the beast approaches before disappearing as a car arrives in the other direction. Four hours later, a hiker discovers the wallaby on the low side of the departmental 951 between Villereau and Berlaimont, in the forest.
A few kilometers away, the owner, Hugo, a resident of Jolimetz, wakes up and goes looking for the body of his animal, in vain. The wallaby is a female named Bonnie: her owner hoped she could give birth to a little Clyde. But the beast disappeared at the beginning of the week. The drought formed a hole in the pond of her enclosure through which she escaped.
An animal that “goes through a foxhole”
One and a half year old Bonnie lived with Django, a male wallaby and their friends, deer and alpacas in a huge enclosure. “It is an animal which is not very big and which passes through a hole like a fox, even a big rabbit, explains Hugo, who and his family had the green light from the prefecture’s veterinary services. You need what is called “a capacity to keep non-domestic animals”, which is issued by the prefecture. You are told how many animals can live in the enclosure. If there are too many, there is not enough space. We had the capacity to have four.”
– Hugo Camart
This Monday evening, the body of the wallaby was finally found in the forest by Jean-François Hogne, from the Mormal Patrimoine association. Django is now the only wallaby in the enclosure. “We will try to find a female for him, of course, but we have to wait a bit”slips, disappointed, his owner Hugo, who was waiting to find the body of the animal to “to be able to bury her with dignity. We would have liked her to have a little wallaby named Clyde”
15 years ago, a wallaby covered five kilometers in three days
This funny story brought back memories to Internet users, like Carole. The husband of this former Maubeugeoise found a wallaby in their garden 15 years ago when they were returning from a lunch with friends. “At first I thought that the aperitif had been a little too watered”, remembers Carole, still amused. The animal is indeed a wallaby, which had covered, in three days, more than five kilometers from the village of Elesmes. Despite the intervention of firefighters, the animal had fled and returned to its enclosure by itself.
– Jean-Francois Hogne