Law enforcement successfully tracked down the Chatham kangaroo near Ridgetown, Ont. Photos courtesy CBC News/Lexi Prochnicki

Imagine driving through Ontario when suddenly, you catch a glimpse of an escaped zoo animal strolling along the roadway. Chatham, Ont., local Lexi Prochnicki recently experienced one such sighting.

“I figured it was a deer at first,” she told CBC News, “I see so many of them on my route but then I realized deer don’t have tiny arms. I hit the brake and backed up, sure enough it was a kangaroo.”

The mysterious marsupial roaming Chatham is the second kangaroo to escape an Ontario zoo in the past few months. Are runaway wild animals the new normal for the province?

According to police, the recent fugitive kangaroo escaped from Greenview Park and Zoo, located in the municipality of Chatham-Kent. In addition to a kangaroo exhibit, the private zoo’s website boasts exhibits for Russian and Canadian lynxes, as well as Siberian tigers, an African lion, white lion, black lemur, timber wolf, and black bear.

Law enforcement successfully tracked down the Chatham kangaroo near Ridgetown, Ont., several kilometres away from its home, without incident. However, the same cannot be said for the previous kangaroo incident in Oshawa, Ont, where a five-day-long police chase reportedly ended with the kangaroo thumping a police officer’s face.

The recent escape highlights Ontario’s failure to monitor private zoos. Beth Daly, associate professor of anthrozoology at the University of Windsor, told CBC News, “Ontario doesn’t have regulations for roadside zoos. It’s an ongoing public issue for animal welfare people. It’s just very disturbing. If I wanted to open a roadside zoo in Windsor, I would just go get the animals I want and get a licence and I could have a roadside zoo in my backyard or out of my van.”

Until regulations are tightened, there’s always a risk the next animal escapee will be much more dangerous than a kangaroo.

In addition to a kangaroo exhibit, the zoo’s website boasts exhibits for Russian and Canadian lynxes, as well as Siberian tigers, an African lion, white lion, black lemur, timber wolf, and black bear.