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.

Ralph Hamm Mystery Kangaroo

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