Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Frantic family seeks wayward wallaby
He’s cute, he’s friendly (and that may be the problem)
Before going to school in the mornings, Leah Quartermaine would go out in her backyard to feed a bottle of milk to her pet wallaby, who she usually found sleeping in a pouch inside a large dog house.
But last Friday morning, Joey was nowhere to be found.
“She was really upset” when she came back in to announce Joey was missing, mom Rhea Quartermaine said of Leah, 10.
It’s now been a week since the yearold wallaby disappeared from the Quartermaine family home in Southwest Ranches, near Southwest 190th Avenue and 59th Street. And the family still doesn’t know how Joey got past the 6-foot fence around their yard.
Quartermaine and husband Lance looked all over the neighborhood for Joey, putting up missing posters and offering a $500 reward to anyone who helps find him.
The family bought Joey for $3,000 about a year ago from a breeder in Northern Florida. Leah had asked for a pet fox, but a friend who worked at an exotic pets veterinarian suggested a wallaby, Quartermaine said.
“My daughter bottle-fed him every four hours. She put in a lot of time,” she said. “He just recently started staying outside.”
Joey played with Leah and her three younger siblings — and even enjoyed rough-housing with Luna the Doberman, Link the French bulldog and Thor the Jack Russell. Quartermaine shared a
video of Joey chasing the dogs, hopping around inside the house wearing a diaper.
Quartermaine said Joey, who is about 2-feet tall and weighs 10 pounds, had started to graze outside and was being weaned off the baby bottle. That’s why the family bought him a large dog house — big enough for a person to walk into — to sleep in.
The Southwest Ranches Volunteer Fire Rescue, which has a Facebook page devoted to lost and found animals within the town, posted a photo of Joey, asking people to be on the lookout.
The post about Joey says: “He's a very friendly, young wallaby and will hop right up to people. He will let you pick him up … his family is devastated and extremely worried about him!”
Since Joey’s disappearance, Quartermaine’s children have asked her the same question every day when she picks them up from school: Has he been found?
Quartermaine also worries if he’s all right.
“You wonder, is he cold? is he hungry? is he scared?” she said. “If somebody has him, they don’t know how to take care of him. There’s certain things he can’t eat … like he could eat a quarter of a strawberry, but only a very, very small amount. Too much and it could be bad for him.”
The family is asking anyone who spots Joey to call them at 954-605-5599.
“If someone sees him, but can’t catch him, they can let us know the area [to find him],” Quartermaine said.
There are only two other people who have pet wallabies in Broward County, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. A permit is required to own them as pets.