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Remember when ... Kangaroos were spotted in Waukesha County
Pranksters step forward,
but some witnesses still stand by their story
By CORRINNE HESS - GM Today Staff
January 24, 2004
A person dressed in a kangaroo costume is apprehended at Avlis Kennels, S72-W23970 National Ave. in April of 1978.
WAUKESHA - During the early morning hours of April 5, 1978, Patricia Wilcox called the Freeman to say she saw two kangaroos - a big one and a little one - hopping across Moreland Boulevard on Highway A.
"I’m sane, sober and I saw kangaroos," the 34-year-old school bus driver told the Freeman. "I thought they were deer at first. People were honking and slamming on their brakes, and finally, one guy hit one. But it just got up and hopped off."
Wilcox’s story sounded crazy, but throughout the month, a dozen additional witnesses reported kangaroo sightings.
A local tavern even organized a kangaroo hunt. But after catching two rabbits and a couple of grass snakes, the hunters decided to go back to the bar, realizing their intended prey had eluded them.
Some real cut-ups
While the entire county was buzzing over the mysterious kangaroo that hopped through traffic in late evening and early morning hours, two brothers were trying their best not to spoil their secret.
Richard Schmitt, with the help of his brother, Jack, and buddy Craig Rittershaus, said he created the "kangaroo" in the summer of 1977 after hearing that a kangaroo had been spotted in Ohio.
"I made a kangaroo cutout in my garage from plywood," said Richard Schmitt, who was 19 at the time. "Then I showed Craig and we decided it looked too wooden so we smeared some mud on it and used toothpaste for the eye."
Once the kangaroo was finished, the boys made the younger - and shorter - Jack Schmitt hold the cutout and hop across Barker Road at night just below a hill, so drivers would see the kangaroo’s silhouette in their headlights as they went over the hill.
"People were slamming on their brakes and almost driving through yards trying to see where the kangaroo went," Richard Schmitt said. "That’s the funniest thing I ever did in my whole life."
Schmitt, now 46, is a tile contractor who splits time between Brookfield and Montana.
The kangaroo hoax wasn’t the first trick the Schmitts and Rittershaus played on motorists. In 1973 and 1974, the boys built wooden dogs and smeared them with tar, then left them on the side of the road.
"Guys in suits would pull over to help the dog and get tar all over their hands," Schmitt said. "‘Son of a b----!’ they would yell, and we would just crack up. Now that I’m an adult I probably wouldn’t think it was so funny."
The boys continued the kangaroo hoax through the summer of 1977 - almost a year before Wilcox called the Freeman to report what she had seen. As the months passed, other teens living in the town of Brookfield neighborhood joined in.
By the end of the summer the Schmitts were bored with their wooden kangaroo and it was passed on to younger children.
"Once they got it, it was lost," Richard Schmitt said. "I went into the service in May 1978, and never saw the thing again."
Schmitt said his childhood friends, Randy and Rick Latta, told the media about the wooden kangaroo in 2000.
Standing by what they saw
Almost two weeks after Wilcox’s phone call, Janet and Greg Napientek, of Muskego, said they saw a kangaroo on County Trunk A (now Highway 164), just east of Waukesha, around 3 a.m. on April 17, 1978.
"We were coming home from a party and it jumped over the hood of our car and went into the ditch," Janet Napientek said. "We heard later that a kangaroo had escaped from a petting zoo."
The day after the Napienteks reported the sighting, their phone was ringing off the hook with reporters from around the world wanting information about the kangaroo. Janet Napientek was even interviewed on an Australian radio program.
She learned about the Schmitts’ prank during a recent telephone interview, but that didn’t change her mind about what she and her husband saw 26 years ago.
"I know what I saw, and I know it was a kangaroo," Napientek said recently. "What those kids were doing was a separate issue. We have a small farm and I know animals."
Wilcox also still believes what she saw in 1978 was a kangaroo, a relative said, but did not want to comment for this story.
The teasing became unbearable, even after other reports of kangaroo sightings, Wilcox’s sister, Pam Keenan, said recently.
"It was humorous at first and I laughed at her too," Keenan said. "But it became an embarrassment. She said she saw a kangaroo and I believe she did."
Reports of kangaroo sightings stretched from Waukesha to Muskego to Pewaukee, where Esther Haeselich, now 79, reported seeing the animal about 50 feet from her house.
Haeselich, who still lives in Pewaukee, couldn’t remember the details of the sighting clearly, but said she knows it was a kangaroo.
On April 13, 1978, Haeselich told Waukesha County Sheriff sergeants Joseph Albrecht and James Flach that around 6:10 p.m. she looked out her dining room window and saw the kangaroo take "two good jumps."
The kangaroo hopped west and over a steep hill before disappearing into an oak grove, Haeselich reported.
While Wilcox was being laughed at, and the Napienteks were becoming local celebrities, the mysterious kangaroo was being sought, though the mystery remained unsolved.
Schmitt said he thinks the later reports of kangaroo sightings by Wilcox and others were just a case of people seeing a deer and remembering kangaroo stories from the previous year.
"I don’t think anyone else was using the cutout," Schmitt said. "So it just had to be a deer. I know there was never a kangaroo in Wisconsin - come on."
Corrinne Hess can be reached at [email protected]
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Posse unable to round up kangaroos
Woolley’s Bar hopped on bandwagon with ‘roo hunt
PEWAUKEE - William Woolley hopes one day he will be able to personally thank the people who created the kangaroo hoax in the late 1970s.
After meeting a woman at Club 400 in Waukesha in the spring of 1978, and hearing her tale of almost hitting a kangaroo with her car, Woolley decided to have some fun with it.
First, he bought the woman a shot. Then he convinced her to report her story to the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department. A few minutes later he, too, filed a report and so did several of his buddies.
"I had a few drinks in me and didn’t want to make her feel bad," Woolley said. "I knew there was no kangaroo, but the woman was upset so I said, ‘Of course you saw one, I heard a few kangaroos escaped from the zoo.’"
When Woolley heard others were reporting kangaroo sightings, he decided to take advantage of the situation.
"Billy Woolley’s ‘Roo Hunt" was held April 24, 1978, along Pewaukee Lake.
More than 50 "hunters" turned out with fishing nets and air horns, ready to capture the animal.
Woolley, manager of his father, Tom’s, tavern, Woolley’s Bar, organized the hunt.
"I got a dog costume and put a tail on it so it would look like a kangaroo," Woolley said. "Everyone would hunt for awhile, stop to party for a couple of hours and go out again."
Since kangaroos can’t tend bar, Woolley told the Milwaukee County Zoo he would donate any kangaroos he caught.
Before the hunt, Woolley called the sheriff’s department and learned the most recent glimpse was near the county airport.
Woolley led the pack of eager hunters in his 1973 white Cadillac that his friends had painted - without asking - with unwashable black zebra stripes.
Woolley’s plan was to have the hunters drive the kangaroos into a fishing net strung up on one end of a field along Highway JJ.
The hunt was one of the many stunts created by Woolley. Before the bar was sold to the village of Pewaukee in 1989, Woolley and his friends would organize different events, including a funeral for Sampson the gorilla and a motorcycle drop.
At the time, Woolley said while he had never hunted kangaroos, his firm background in organization and planning would assist the hunters.
When questioned further, Woolley disclosed that background consisted mainly of his portrayal of "Practical Pig" - the only one of the three little pigs who thought to build a brick house at Disney World.
Even with his planning "skills," Woolley needed help keeping the other hunters on track.
Scott Witthun, of Oconomowoc, led the motorcycle contingent. Witthun, a friend of Woolley’s, showed up early to the hunt wearing a camouflage suit, rubber infantry boots, a flipped-brim hat and sunglasses.
"I had just gotten back from ‘Nam at the time and had all my gear," said Witthun, now 55. "We knew we weren’t going to find any kangaroos. It was just a total bar party."
Wayne Hembrook, of Waukesha, coordinated the hunt on his CB radio, where he was known at the time to fellow band radio owners as "Untouchable."
Hembrook didn’t plan to leave his car to do any actual footwork. "If we see a kangaroo we’ll just crank up the old beater (his Oldsmobile station wagon) and chase him into the field," he said.
After the unsuccessful hunt broke up in late afternoon, everyone went back to Woolley’s to down a free half-keg of beer. Woolley also sold about 50 kangaroo T-shirts that said, "Waukesha County - ‘Roo Country."
"Oh yeah, I still remember that day," Witthun said. "We sure had a lot of fun. Once Woolley’s Bar was gone, so was the fun."
Corrinne Hess can be reached at [email protected]
This story appeared in the Waukesha Freeman on Jan. 24, 2004.
http://www.gmtoday.com/news/local_stories/2004/January_04/01242004_05.asp