Have you seen me? Escaped kangaroo missing
5-year-old Storm disappears from Jupiter Farms sanctuary.
JUPITER FARMS — TV crews crowded the typically quiet dirt road in Jupiter Farms Tuesday, nearly 24 hours after one of its residents had disappeared.
Neighbors described Storm as a comedian, especially when he leaned back, exposing his round belly and scratching his chest as if he hadn’t a care in the world. The 4-foot-tall, 45-pound tawny kangaroo with black paws escaped Monday night from the home of Eric Westergard, where Storm lived in a sanctuary with six other kangaroos.
As of Tuesday evening, the 5-year-old marsupial was still missing. Searchers said when they find Storm, they plan to subdue him with a tranquilizer dart and return him to his owner.
Storm was known to never leave the side of his best kangaroo pal,
Avalanche, neighbors said.
How — or why — did he escape? The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, overseeing a day-long search, is looking into just that.
He was really laid-back, Westergard told The Palm Beach Post. However, “sometimes they get spooked,” he said about his kangaroos, meaning the presence of a predator or crash of a thunderstorm could have scared the animal offffffffffff. Westergard, who has the proper permitting to own kangaroos, has raised Storm since infancy.
His mind was elsewhere when answering a reporter’s questions Tuesday afternoon as he balanced the demands of his roofifing company with the search for Storm.
A do g wandered without a leash along another dirt road blocks from the sanctuary. A poster seeking help to find a missing cat was posted along Jupiter Farms Road. But Storm was di ff ff ff ff f ff fe rent: he’s an exotic animal, and he needed to be brought home.
Farms residents saw their neighborhood turn into a scene down under when Storm hopped away.
David Bronson caught a glance of him while outside with his dog around 7:20 a.m.
Twenty minutes later, Kim Baker Linton said her son, Robbie, spotted the buck hopping along near 159th Court North and 95th Avenue North.
Throughout the day, more officers had been asked to help find the lost little ’roo. By Tuesday evening, between 12 and 15 offifficers with FWC and the Florida Highway Patrol, a K-9 from the Tequesta Police Department and two drones were scouring the rural neighborhood of homes on big lots west of Jupiter.
There was one hi c c up in the search, besides the expansive, sometimes dense landscape of Jupiter Farms: Kangaroos are nocturnal, so Storm was likely hiding out. And searchers planned to put things on hold when night fell.
These kind of escapes in residential areas are “pretty rare,” said Busch Wildlife Sanctuary Executive Director Amy Kight. Her organization has helped track down an emu found in a natural area and a kinkajou found rummaging through a garbage can.
On such occasions, owners sometimes are nowhere to be found, often because they didn’t have a permit or didn’t want the animal anymore.
In July 2004, a 6-year-old Bengal-Siberian tiger mix named Bobo escaped from a Loxahatchee sanctuary run by former Tarzan actor Steve Sipek. The tiger was on the lam for a day before an offifficer, saying the tiger lunged at him, shot and killed Bobo just 400 yards from his home. Years later, the state settled ad if ff ff ff ff ff fe rent case against Sipek by revoking his right to keep the big cats.
A 60- pound wall aroo named Bucky Buckaroo and Pancho the goat owned by Robert Van Winkle, also known as rapper Vanilla Ice, also disappeared that same year in his wife’s grandmother’s Port St. Lucie yard. He had to pay a $2,000 fifine because the city doesn’t allow such exotic pets.
This year, the FWC investigated one other missing exotic animal in Palm Beach County, a marmoset who took offff from an owner in Jupiter, FWC spokeswoman Carol Lyn Parrish said.
Storm is not a sign ificant public safety risk, but those who see him shouldn’t approach the animal. Instead, contact the FWC Wildlife Alert Hotline at 888404-3922.