A Dartford taxi-driver thought he might be “hallucinating” when he saw what he believed could be a kangaroo trying to cross a busy road.
Jag Alli, 39, a driver for All Night Cars and Taxi Service Dartford, was travelling along Green Street Green Road in Kent at around 9.30am on Friday when he spotted what he believed was a white or albino kangaroo.
Mr Alli, who lives in Dartford, had been waiting in slow traffic for 10 minutes behind around 100 cars to reach the junction with Gore Road.
On approaching the junction, Mr Alli was “shocked” to see an animal which resembled a kangaroo.
He told the Standard: “I have been a taxi driver for 17 years and I’ve seen all sorts of creatures, but I’ve never seen anything like that.
“At first it seemed like a hallucination or a big rat.
“It’s like seeing a baby lion or a baby elephant.”
Mr Alli said he believed the animal must have been a pet or might have escaped from a zoo or aniamal sanctuary.
Despite traffic building up behind him, Mr Alli got out of his car and attempted to safely guide the animal - that it is thought could be a wallaby - out of the road.
When he approached the animal he found it had “red, blurry eyes leaking water”, leading Mr Alli to believe it might be sick with a virus.
He said he was shocked by the amount of people who must have driven past the animal without stopping to help it.
Mr Alli was accompanied by a passenger assistant who supports children with disabilities on their school run.
The assistant captured a video from inside the car, which Mr Alli posted onto Facebook, showing him ushering the kangaroo out of the road and back into a safe area of shrubbery.
Although Mr Alli initially hoped to catch the animal, he decided not to touch it for fear of “wrestling, kicking or punching before one of us put the other in a headlock.”
Mr Alli added that if it had been possible, he would even have put the animal in the boot of his car to take it to safety.
He added: “If it was any other animal I would have done the same thing.”
Mr Alli said he posted the video to Facebook with the hopes the animal could be found either by its potential owner or an animal charity which can look after it.
Although kangaroos aren’t native to the UK, wild wallabies, a smaller “macropod” animal of the same family which looks similar to a kangaroo, can be found in England.
There is currently a large population of around 1,750 wallabies living in the Isle of Man, according to Kent Wildwood Trust.
It is believed they were brought to a wildlife zoo in the area in 1965, but several of them managed to escape and breed, forming a population.
In 2020 research conducted by University College Dublin and the University of South Wales found that wallabies were most likely first brought into the UK in the late 19th Century for zoos and private collections.
Wallabies can survive in the UK and they have no natural predators in the country. Youngsters can sometimes be killed by dogs and foxes, but this does not happen often according to the Wildwood Trust.
The marsupials often make woodlands and heathlands their habitats, while they eat a herbivore diet mainly consisting of grasses, roots, tree leaves and weeds.
