Residents of a small English village were left shocked when they spotted a wallaby casually hopping around.
Usually a more common sight in Australia, people living in Evenwood, near Bishop Auckland in County Durham, couldn’t believe their eyes when they spotted the marsupial on Saturday.
Accountant Nigel Hewitt said: ‘I saw the animal near the Lyons Court car home just after 3pm on Saturday.
‘I was out for a walk with my wife when I saw it cross the road and I said to her, “I’m sure that’s a wallaby that just crossed the road.”
‘She thought I was having her on. But then I saw it hopping down the road towards us.
‘It then turned around went on to the path and toward the care home where I got footage of it.’
He added: ‘Cars were stopping and people were looking out of their windows saying “did I just see what I saw”.
Rachel Birch was out for a dog walk with her children when she spotted the animal on Saturday afternoon.
‘We were near the cricket club in the village when we saw the wallaby jumping around. Thought that was unusual,’ she said.
‘It hopped away. I didn’t want to hang around and scare it. I think other people have organised for someone to come and catch it and take it somewhere safe.
‘There have been some comments on social media saying it may have escaped from a nearby farm.’
Although wallabies are native to Australia, a surprising number of them have been spotted some 10,000 miles away in the UK.
The animals are not native to this country, and are thought to have survived and bred after breaking loose from zoos.
And during the Second World War, many wallabies were intentionally released into the wild, as zookeepers knew they would no longer be able to care for them.
There have been almost 100 confirmed sightings of the marsupials over the last decade.
Most of the sightings were in southern England and happened in the month of August.
Colonies of wallabies are thought to now exist in the Peak District, Derbyshire, East Sussex and on the Isle of Man.
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