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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Environment
Sam Wollaston

‘It moved … it was hopping!’ One man’s search for a wild wallaby in the UK

Sam Wollaston as he prepares to go Wallaby hunting in the village of Oxhill in Warwickshire
Sam Wollaston prepares to go wallaby hunting in Oxhill, Warwickshire. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian

It was about 9.30 or 10 on a dark, late November night; Molly Laird was driving her pink Mini home along country lanes to her Warwickshire cottage. Suddenly, the headlights’ beam picked up an animal sitting in the road. “I thought it was a deer at first,” Molly tells me. “But when it moved, its tail wasn’t right, and it was hopping. It took me a while to realise, but I thought: that’s a kangaroo!”

Molly’s next thought was: “I’m going insane,” closely followed by, “No one’s going to believe me.” So she got out her phone and filmed it. Later, she posted the video on social media, where she was told it was likely to be not a kangaroo, but its smaller cousin, the red-necked wallaby.

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