EDITOR’S NOTE: Retired Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks Conservation Officer Kennie Prince had a 26-year career with the agency. He has recently released “The Poacher’s Nightmare: Stories of an Undercover Game Warden,” a book that contains accounts of his career in the outdoors. The following is an excerpt from his book.
By Kennie Prince
Being the local game warden, one receives all kinds of calls, from “I heard a black panther” to “I saw Bigfoot.” Nothing surprised me anymore. I answered the phone one morning and the fella’s first words were, “I don’t drink!” I replied, “Do what?” He then responded, “I live in Reservoir West and, while I was drinking coffee this morning, a kangaroo hopped by my window!” I responded with a little chuckle, “A what?” He quickly came back, “I know what I saw!” I said, “I’ll be over shortly.”
I put on my uniform and headed that way. Not knowing what I was going to do with this situation, I called in to the dispatcher, saying, “I’m headed on a kangaroo call!” “Do what? Repeat,” the dispatcher responded. I laughed and said, “Headed on a kangaroo call at Reservoir West subdivision.” Dispatcher said, “OK!”
As I was turning into the subdivision, the statewide radio (Sheriff’s Department) blurted out, “Someone just reported they hit a kangaroo in Reservoir West.” OK, maybe he wasn’t nuts. I called dispatch on the radio and said, “Might need to call someone from the zoo, got a crippled kangaroo on the side of the road in Reservoir West!”
As I arrived at the scene, a sheriff’s deputy pulled up. I’d never seen a kangaroo other than at the zoo or on TV. It seemed kind of small. As I was looking at it lying in the ditch, the deputy said, “I just saw another one cross the road.” I looked down the road and, sure enough, there was another kangaroo standing in someone’s front yard. I told the deputy to get in his car, circle the block and stop any traffic from coming in from the other direction. We’d try not to spook it until someone from the zoo got there with a dart gun to tranquilize it.
We just kept an eye on it, trying to keep people from spooking it. Finally, a young lady from the zoo got there. She eased up to the wallaby, as she called it, and darted it. They are a relative to the kangaroo, just a smaller species. We were able to load it into a cage she had on her truck. The one that had been hit by a car had died. We later discovered that the wallabies had gotten out of a pen several miles away after a storm had blown a tree across the fence, allowing them to escape.
Kennie Prince’s book, “The Poacher’s Nightmare: Stories of an Undercover Game Warden,” is available at University Press of Mississippi (www.upress.state.ms.us)
Law Enforcement