I’ve lived here two years and I’m still just getting to know this town. The longer I am here, however, the more fascinating I find this city’s past.
Waukesha is full of amazing history; natural springs, historical landmarks, and…
Kangaroos?
This is a bit of history about Waukesha that I had never heard of before. Throughout all of the interesting facts and legends people so enthusiastically share with me, no one had ever told me about the Great Waukesha Kangaroo Flap of ’78.
Why haven’t they told me- its history, right? Or is this something Waukesha is trying to bury in its past? Or is it an Urban Legend?
Let’s catch up on the facts while we reminisce about one of Waukesha’s little known legends.
It seems that back in 1978, Waukesha County was the center of media attention following a rash of reports about rogue kangaroos hopping around the town.
The whole thing began in April of ’78 when a school bus driver on Mooreland Boulevard reported seeing two kangaroos hop across the road. She said other vehicles were honking, slamming on the brakes, and traffic had come to a standstill. She also said that a car had hit one of the beasts, but it got up and hopped away.
A week later, a man reported seeing something bound across Highway 83 while on his way home from Ethan Allen School for Boys. He actually never said it was a kangaroo, but he described it as having short front legs, long back legs, standing hunched over, and being approximately three feet tall.
Sounds like a wallaby to me.
A few days passed and, at 3AM, on County Trunk A, a couple spotted a strange creature in their headlights. They assumed it was a deer until they got a little closer. The varmint then stood up on its hind legs, jumped a ditch and disappeared.
The mysterious marsupials were getting more brazen.
Now the town was in an uproar. Bounties were being placed on the kangaroos and storekeepers were setting traps outside their businesses. T-shirts went on sale and from all this- a kangaroo cocktail was born: vodka, Southern Comfort, cranberry juice, and grapefruit juice.
Which brings me to the next part of this intriguing story- the kangaroo hunt on the shores of Pewaukee Lake.
I’m pretty sure the kangaroo cocktail had something to do with this.
On Saturday, April 22nd, 1978, some 50 hunters gathered to hunt the kangaroos. As the story goes, it was theorized that kangaroos didn’t like water, so the thought was to drive the wallabies to the shoreline and net them.
Vodka and Southern Comfort evidently make you a zoologist as much as tequila makes you Superman.
Needless to say, the adventurers had no success. If pink elephants were the bounty, things may have been different. Saturday night was spent telling tales at the bar of the great Wisconsin marsupial hunt- that netted no marsupials.
However, on Sunday morning, two kangaroos were reported near County Highway 22. The legend of the phantom kangaroos was not yet ready die.
Soon after, a photo surfaced of a kangaroo-like creature in the woods. Two men said they were photographing ducks when they spotted the animal. The photo made papers throughout the nation.
Was this proof of Waukesha wallabies?
No one knows for sure, but what transpired next is just silly.
A press release was supposedly put out by the Wisconsin Agricultural Department warning citizens to keep both themselves and their pets away from the kangaroos because they could be diseased.
The way to tell if a wallaby was sick, according to the WAD, was to check its lower lip for a tattoo stating it was free of disease. If the tattoo was there, the wallaby was clear.
This story just gets better and better.
The press release was later revealed to be an elaborate hoax and people were beginning to doubt the whole kangaroo mystery.
Throughout the years, more kangaroo sightings were reported, but many people began to write off the entire event as part of Waukesha’s colorful past; nothing more than a myth about kangaroos that had the town stirring and a nation wondering what the heck was in the dinking water in Waukesha.
We are still wondering what is in the drinking water in Waukesha, but the legend of the wallaby has gone the way of the buffalo.
This town never ceases to amaze me.
I am thinking of taking donations for a “Waukesha Wallaby” statue to be erected along the Fox River. It can join the bears on the river and the dragonfly by the dam as part of Waukesha’s animal history in bronze.
I owe a special thanks to the book, “Weird Wisconsin” for this story. The book was sent to me as a Christmas gift from my friends in California.
