5 times unusual Tucson animals escaped to freedom

Pima County Sheriff's spent several hours trying to capture four emus that got loose Thursday morning in a neighborhood on the southwest side, authorities said.

The four large birds were contained in the area of West Drexel Blvd. and South Cardinal Ave., said department spokesman, Deputy Tracy Suitt.

Two have been returned to their owner and are back in their pen, while the other two are en route in a horse-trailer.

Emus are the second largest birds in the world, while ostriches are the first.

The Pima County Sheriff's Department can now add pigs to the growing list of animals that they've wrangled on the job.

Earlier this week, Deputy Cody Bierman and Deputy Nicole Crowson encountered an elderly man being chased down North Sandario Road by a large pig, according a to a department Facebook post.

Bierman jumped in front of the pig, allowing the man time to run to safety. A passerby gave the deputies a tie-down that they fashioned into a leash to wrangle the pig.

The deputies called Wild Hearts Animal Rescue who transported the pig to the Ironwood Pig Sanctuary, the post said.

In 2015, deputies managed to wrangle horses, emus and wallaroos on the loose in town.

A Sheriff's department investigation into two kangaroos who went missing from their home on Tucson's far northwest side has yielded new information, authorities said.

A video released yesterday that was taken by a passerby as he was driving out of town showed what appeared to be a kangaroo bounding down the side of the road.

After talking to the animals' owner, a department spokesman confirmed today that the marsupial in question was actually a wallaroo- a smaller member of the kangaroo family.

Although it turns out that the video was taken last Wednesday, the owner was unaware that the wallaroos were missing from his 20-acre property until a few days ago, said Sheriff's department spokesman Deputy Tracy Suitt.

The man filming the video said that he called the Arizona Game and Fish Department to report the sighting the following morning.

After the Sheriff's department was notified of the wallaroos' disappearance Monday, an "attempt to locate," which is used to alert other deputies of a missing person, was issued.

The wallaroo caught on film, Boomer, still hasn't been found, Suitt said.

Bouncy, the second wallaroo, is believed to still be on the property, but the owner has been unable to locate her, as she likes to hide in the brush.

As long as the wallaroos aren't aggressive, it's legal for them to be kept as pets.

Boomer was last seen near the area of North Anway Road and West Avra Valley Road.

Anyone who spots a wallaroo on the loose is asked to call 911.

A 100-pound tortoise had a six-person escort across First Avenue near Roger Road yesterday during rush hour before he was rescued and reunited with his family.

Jade the African Sulcata tortoise was attempting to cross the busy street around 5 p.m. on Tuesday. Motorists and employees from the shops along the road stopped traffic to help him cross.

Sarah Lawrence was on her motorcycle in the gridlock and wound her way to the front to see if she could help with what she thought was an accident.

"I look over and there's this ginormous turtle," Lawrence said. "I said, you have got to be kidding me."

As she rode up, the group of people and the tortoise had made it to the center lane. But Lawrence said, "they couldn't pick him up, he was so heavy. But suddenly he just started booking it across the road. It was a once in a lifetime type of thing."

Someone called Tucson Reptile Rescue at 844 S. Sixth Avenue and Charlotte Gillis dispatched a volunteer to pick him up.

"We probably get one call a week to pick up these tortoises," Gillis, the president and founder of Tucson Reptile Rescue said. "They are escape artists."

African Sulcatas are the third largest species of tortoise in the world. They can dig burrows over 15 feet and ram through fencing, Gillis said.

Tucson Reptile Rescue's volunteer drove around the neighborhood until he found the owners. They plan to pick up Jade after they fix the fencing that he damaged in the escape.

Drivers encountered rain throughout Tucson on Thursday, but some also spotted mules on the road in the Catalina Foothills area.

Richard Meyer was leaving the Casas Adobes branch of the U.S. Post Office on North Oracle Road south of East Orange Grove Road when he noticed what he believed to be three horses running loose in the bike lane.

Meyer said the horses were traveling northbound on Oracle.  He made a u-turn to follow them, but by the time he completed the turn, he had lost sight of them.

"They either turned right on Orange Grove or ran into one of the subdivisions along Oracle," he said.

Pima County Sheriff Department spokesman Tom Peine said they received the first call about what turned out to be mules at 2:20 p.m., reported as a road hazard.

Deputies arrived on the scene a few minutes later and were able to corral what was actually five mules into an apartment complex parking lot, he said.

A civilian with a rope was able to help secure one of the mules, but the others became spooked and made it out of the parking lot.

The four other mules were again corralled in another apartment complex, with the assistance of two other deputies.

At 2:30, Peine received notification that officers had safely corralled the horses in an apartment complex parking lot.

Peine said that Southern Arizona Mounted Search and Rescue were on their way with a 7-horse trailer, but a civilian was there to help before it arrived.

"A woman read about it on Twitter and brought her horse trailer to help," he said.

The property the mules got loose from was in the area of North Oracle Road and Roller Coaster Road.  According to Peine, the mules' owner sent a ranch hand to retrieve them from the Sheriff.

"We received a tremendous amount of assistance from the public," he said.