Exotic animals finding homes in southwest

Let’s suppose you are driving, it’s after sunset, you’re on that road heading north out of Clovis, and something dashes from the side of the road and you hit it. You get out and your road-kill turns out to be a kangaroo.

A kangaroo in Curry County.

This isn’t such a far-fetched idea; kangaroos have turned up in Wisconsin twice. Just last month, 75 miles northwest of Wisconsin’s state capitol in Madison, a driver struck and killed a kangaroo. Last January, authorities captured a kangaroo in Dodgeville, Wis. Now it’s hopping around the Madison Zoo.

The Lady of the House dismissed my idea that a pair of kangaroos were picked up in Australia by aliens in a UFO then dropped in Wisconsin as a kind of extraterrestrial practical joke.

“They’re probably from someone’s private game preserve,” she said. “They won’t ‘fess up because there’s probably some law against having them.”

I thought about some out-of-place animals I’ve seen.

I’ve gotten used to seeing llamas and their kin around the country, like the ones on East 21st Street.

A couple of months ago there were some camels penned up on some property just off Thornton Street south of the rail yard.

It wasn’t strange seeing camels in Clovis, not after I saw some west of Wichita Falls, Texas. The Lady of the House and I were driving along U. S. 287. We rounded a bend in the highway and she exclaimed, “Camels!” In a field thick with green grass were 20 or so camels. Some were in that upright camel pose we’re used to seeing, some had their long necks stretched out and were munching on the lush grass. The sight was surreal.

If you’re ever traveling on Interstate 10 between Tucson and Phoenix, keep your eyes open for the hundreds of ostriches someone’s raising on the south side of the highway. There’s even a place for travelers to pull over and have a closer look at the huge African birds.

When it comes to animals that aren’t where they belong, the place that sticks in my mind is a hacienda near Cananea in northern Mexico. It’s a long story as to how I ended up at this exotic ranchero but the short version is I was on a tour.

The place was owned by a man who liked all kinds of animals from around the world roaming freely on his property. There were red deer from Europe, exotic antelope from Africa and a small herd of buffalo. The weirdest moment was spying the hacienda’s lone zebra. I had to remind myself I was in the mountains near Sonora in Mexico looking at an animal native to Africa standing on top of a hill.

Some people want to go beyond private game preserves and places like “Lion Country Safari.” There are folks who see the depopulation of the Great Plains and say people should be moved out and the plains returned to the buffalo, antelope and wolf. Others say African animals like elephants and lions should be brought in to roam the depopulated North American plains because they’re being squeezed out of Africa.

So if you’re tooling along in your car and you see an out-of-place animal, it’s not your imagination.

The Lady of the House says it’s not an alien practical joke, either.

Grant McGee hosts the weekday morning show on KTQM-FM in Clovis. Contact him at: [email protected]