Kangaroo Runs Loose in Staten Island Parking Lot

A pet kangaroo named Buster caused a brief stir on Saturday morning when it got loose in a Staten Island neighborhood.

Witnesses first spotted the runaway marsupial bouncing around in the parking lot of an auto repair shop. Owner Urim Osmani said when he arrived for work, he saw Buster kneeling down about 20 feet away. He assumed it was a deer from a nearby wildlife refuge.

“Then he stood up,” Osmani said. “I said, ‘What’s a kangaroo doing on Staten Island?’”

Police officers responding to a 911 call were able to locate Buster’s owner at a nearby home. The man retrieved his kangaroo, saying it had hopped away from a friend’s fenced backyard about 15 minutes earlier after a gate was accidentally left open.

Although keeping a kangaroo in the city is prohibited, it’s allowed in the upstate New York community where the owner lives, police said. The owner assured them that he and Buster were headed home.

According to the Staten Island Advance, Buster’s breakout occurred on the same block where a zebra named Razzi and a pony named Casper escaped three years ago and took a stroll down a busy thoroughfare before they were lured back home with food.

This article appeared in print on page 5 of the October 19th, 2015 edition of Hamodia.