State says rescued kangaroo can continue going incognito

Open Records office says Game Commission does not have to tell previous owner where animal is

A kangaroo rescued from Bucks County more than two years ago will remain in the marsupial equivalent of the Witness Protection Program, a Pennsylvania official ruled this week.

The Pennsylvania Office of Open Records ruled Wednesday that officials with the Pennsylvania Game Commission do not need to release information about a kangaroo they rescued in November 2018.

Loren McCutcheon, a former Quakertown woman who previously owned the kangaroo, had requested the commission provide information about the animal’s whereabouts in a December Right-to-Know request.

The commission denied her request in January, saying that releasing the kangaroo’s location would create a reasonable likelihood someone would be placed at “substantial and demonstrable risk.” In 2019, McCutcheon attempted to take back the kangaroo from Peaceable Kingdom, a traveling petting zoo that had acquired the animal afterward.

According to police and media reports, McCutcheon used a bolt cutter to get through the zoo’s gate in Bedminster with the intent of escaping with the exotic animal in her Honda Pilot. She was foiled when she and the zoo’s owner got into an altercation, and she ultimately pleaded guilty to criminal mischief and defiant trespassing. The kangaroo was relocated as a result.

McCutcheon, 54, appealed the denial, but an open records officer supported the commission’s decision.

“Based upon the evidence presented, including the description of the Requester’s conduct at Peaceable Kingdom and the criminal docket sheets associated therewith, the Commission has met its burden of proving that disclosure of the requested information would be reasonably likely to threaten the personal security of an individual at the kangaroo’s current location,” wrote Joshua T. Young, the appeals officer who reviewed the case.

Contact information for McCutcheon, now of Florida, was not immediately available. Associated Press reported in January she had been charged with 10 counts of animal cruelty after officials in Florida found her driving with 26 animals — including an alpaca, a lemur, mini horses, dogs, cats, horses and donkeys — jammed in a single filthy trailer.

Erik Arneson, an open records expert who led the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records, praised the office’s decision. A disingenuous reading of the ruling might conclude the government is recognizing the rights of a kangaroo, but that’s not the case, he said. McCutcheon’s criminal history and the fact she was already caught breaking into a facility to reach the kangaroo shows releasing the information could endanger the animal’s latest handlers.

“The decision revolved around the personal security of the people who worked there,” Arneson said. “This is exactly the kind of thing this exemption was written to cover.”