- It’s ironic — the animals supposed to help inmates decided to go on the lam.
An inmate manages to escape the jail by digging a secret tunnel under the facility’s walls. This prison escape story is as old as time, familiar from movies like Shawshank Redemption.
Recently, these events played out scene by scene in the Czech Republic. However, there’s a bit of a plot twist — the escapees weren’t human at all.
They were kangaroos.
Two kangaroos tunneled their way out of a Czech prison complex, where they were part of the prison’s animal husbandry program. One of the animals returned to the prison shortly after its escape, but the other went on the lam.
After a week of hiding from the long arm of the law, however, the escaped kangaroo came back as well. It discovered the hard way that there’s precious little for kangaroos to eat in Czech forests.
Now, both animals are back home and well-fed. They’ve returned to their previous duties of helping rehabilitate inmates nearing the end of their prison term.
Under the Fence
The great kangaroo escape took place near the town of Jirice in central Czech Republic. The village’s outskirts are home to the Jirice prison, an open facility with space for 32 prisoners.
On August 3, however, the prison’s security was compromised. Two kangaroos managed to break free and take off from the facility grounds.
According to reports, the kangaroos were able to dig a tunnel under their enclosure’s fence. We’re pretty sure the prison management was as surprised at the animals’ digging abilities as we are.
One of the escapees, however, quickly got cold feet and returned behind bars.
“One of the fugitives is already back in prison,” Jirice prison’s spokeswoman Marketa Prunerová told TVP World. “However, the other is still on the run.”
And on the run it would stay for a good while. The kangaroo took off and disappeared into forests surrounding Jirice.
A Week on the Run
As the kangaroo escaped, the Jirice prisons asked locals to report any sightings of the animal. At the same time, they urged the public to stay away from the kangaroo.
After all, the bouncing Australian beast could have hurt itself during the escape. Kangaroos can be mean even when they’re uninjured and well-rested, so you really don’t want to try your luck with an irate and hurt one.
Although you’d imagine a kangaroo would stand out like a sore thumb in the Czech wilderness, the call for public help gave the prison nothing to go on. For the next week, nobody saw any trace of the animal.
Finally, on August 10, the kangaroo showed up again. It was spotted hopping back toward the prison along a local road.
The prison staff was able to encircle the kangaroo with a net and capture it without much of a struggle. They soon realized why the kangaroo returned — the poor thing was starving.
As it turns out, there wasn’t a whole heck of a lot for the kangaroo to eat in the forest. Despite losing some weight, the kangaroo was otherwise in good condition and is expected to make a full recovery.
Healing Through Kangaroo Care
Although they staged a fairly elaborate prison break, the kangaroos aren’t inmates. If anything, they’re part of the prison staff.
The Jirice prison opened in 2017 as an experimental open prison for inmates within a year and half from the end of their term. Although it’s unique in the Czech Republic, the Jirice prison is based on a Scandinavian prison model.
The facility has no armed guards or a strict daily schedule. Each inmate has his daily duties, but they’re free to do them at their own pace.
And that’s where the kangaroos come in. The Jirice prison houses a small farm where the inmates can learn farming and animal husbandry skills.
At the farm, they take care of a variety of animals. In addition to beasts they might encounter in the Czech Republic, like rabbits and chickens, the farm also has more exotic animals, such as our kangaroos and some llamas.
The farm’s goal is to let inmates with anger management and other issues get used to normal(ish) life before their release. Ultimately, the farming program aims to reduce the rate of repeat crimes, which admittedly runs very high in the Czech Republic.
We can only hope the kangaroos’ escape doesn’t set a bad example for the facility’s human inmates.