Hunt on for Wendell the wandering wallaby

OTTAWA, Oct. 31 (UPI) -- Towels soaked with kangaroo urine are being hung around a Canadian town in Ontario in hopes of luring a runaway wallaby back to his pen.

Wendell, a 3-year-old Bennett's Red Necked Wallaby, escaped from his enclosure at Saunders Country Critters and Garden Center in Kemptville south of Ottawa Tuesday night when a windstorm blew down a 35-foot fence panel, the Ottawa Citizen reported.

Several kangaroos and wallabies escaped, but all were captured quickly recaptured, the facility's co-owner Carla Saunders said.

Thursday, there were confirmed sightings of Wendell in the town of Athens, 50 miles southwest of Kemptville, she said.

Saunders issued an appeal that if anyone spotted the 30-inch "kangaroo wannabe," they should "throw a blanket on top of him, grab him by the tail and drop him into a pillowcase," which she said provides a similar sense of security to a mother wallaby's pouch.

Saunders said her husband and friends hung his pen mates' urine-soaked towels on bushes in the hopes the familiar odor would lure Wendell into sight, the report said.