TRUMANSBURG, N.Y. —A kangaroo, presumably escaped from the Trumansburg Fair, caused a commotion on Route 96 Monday as people tried to catch it before it could dart off into a nearby wooded area.
Darlynne Overbaugh, owner of Life’s So Sweet Chocolate in Ithaca’s Press Bay Alley, said she was headed northbound in her gray minvan around 5:30 p.m. when something about 100-feet away caught the corner of her eye.
“At first I thought it was a dog or deer because those are native to the area…but then it jumped so high, and I was like, oh no, that’s a kangaroo,” she said.
Thinking it might react like a deer, she honked her horn hoping it would stop.
“Sure enough, it stopped in the middle of the road,” she said.
That’s about the time Overbaugh saw a man, someone she thinks may have been a handler for the animal, come onto the road and try to catch the kangaroo. She said he first appeared to want to grab the animal in the roadway, but then seemed to decide it would be better to chase it back toward the fairgrounds and away from the nearby woods.
“Basically, the guy had to wrestle to get it …I mean those legs are really strong,” she said.
A man in a vintage red car with two dogs in it got out of his vehicle to help the handler, and then another person from the fairgrounds also came to help catch the animal , which Overbaugh said appeared stressed. They were able to hold the animal down in a laying position after about five minutes of trying to catch it.
She said she drove off after it seemed like the three people had the situation under control.
“I don’t know how they got it back into the fairgrounds. It wasn’t like it has a leash,” she said.
“I was glad to see the animal was OK and nobody got hurt, but it was quite a shock to be in little Trumansburg and then have a kangaroo in the middle of the road,” she said. “It was just wild, literally a wild encounter.”
Her daughter Penelope was also in the van during the kangaroo capture, but Overbaugh said the 5-year-old was pretty concerned with her first newly loose tooth and rolled the encounter into that excitement.
Overbaugh said Penelope told her, “Now we have two special things to tell daddy.”
The Trumansburg Police Department and Trumansburg Fair Association could not immediately be reached for comment.
Featured photo by Darlynne Overbaugh. Did you see the kangaroo? Share your photos in the comments.