6/9/07 - Clues revised

Placed: 2-28-04
Planted By: WWW (Formerly known as Chuck and Molly)
Location: Willington, Connecticut, Tolland County
Rated: Easy terrain. No large hills. Well marked trail. About 2 miles round trip.

From the Junction of Route 44 and Route 74 take Route 74 west and look for Moose Meadow Road on your right.

From Route 84 take exit 69 and go east on route 74 until you come to Moose Meadow Road on your left.

From the intersection of routes 44 and 195 at the Mansfield four corners, take route 195 north through the intersection and quickly turn right onto route 320 Willington Hill Road. At .8 mile you come to a Y. Bear right here with route 320. At 2.7 miles you come to another Y. Bear left here and see a sign that says "to 74". At 3.4 miles you come to a church on the left and the intersection of route 74. Take a right here onto route 74 east. Drive 1.5 miles to a blinking light and take the left turn onto Moose Meadow Road.

Drive 1.8 miles down Moose Meadow Road. Take a right onto Burma Road which is also the entrance to Fenton – Ruby Park. As soon as you enter Burma Road, you will see a parking area and information bulletin board on the right, park here.

This is the same park as State Symbols Series of 5 boxes and the Delaware State Stamp Letterbox.

Walk up the road and take the first trail on the left. It is clearly marked Taylor Pond Trail and is blazed in yellow. You will quickly go over a nice wooden bridge. The trail will twist and curve mainly near the edge of the pond. You will next pass a nice overlook of the pond and a bench. Keep following the yellow blazes. The trail will come to a semi clearing and twist and curve through it. It will again enter the woods and head away from the pond. The trail will run alongside a stone wall for a short distance and enter a group of ironwood trees. Next you will come to a trail going off to the left. Take this trail. It is clearly marked Julia’s Trail and is marked in bright green blazes. Keep on that trail. You will come to a stream that is flowing west as the trail turns east. This is the Fenton River. Walk on until you come to a small wooden bridge that would take you over an intermittent stream. Stop just before stepping on the bridge. Take a reading of 130 degrees. Go off the trail in that direction. Walk 50 steps to a large tree that is 90 inches in circumference. The tree trunk branches into two at about eye level. On the ground beside the tree, you will see a pile of rocks and a small piece of plywood with a rock on top of it. Remove the rock and plywood to reveal the opening and the letterbox. Return the way you came. It is the shortest and easiest route.

Since the first known appearance in Richmond Wisconsin in 1899, a strange creature has been appearing throughout the United States. Now, this creature would not seem strange at all in Australia because this out of place animal is a kangaroo. It is not your normal kangaroo. These kangaroos suddenly appear and vanish, have abnormal strength and abilities, and are vicious. They are described to be 3.5 - 5.5 feet tall with glowing eyes and ghostly characteristics. To those that study paranormal events, they are known as phantom kangaroos. Phantom kangaroos have appeared across the United States. The sightings seem to come in waves and are in both urban and rural areas. Often the kangaroos are reported to have attacked and killed cats, dogs, sheep, poultry, birds and other small animals.

In 1934 several witnesses including a Reverend, saw a Kangaroo. The sightings coincided with mysterious killings of a dog and several chickens. The Kangaroo was allegedly seen fleeing the scene carrying sheep.

From 1957 to 1967, phantom kangaroos haunted Coon Rapids, Minnesota and were spotted by numerous witnesses . They named the creature "Big Bunny".

In 1974, two police officers in Chicago answered a call from a resident who claimed that a kangaroo was sitting on his front porch. The police had a good laugh until a few hours later when they actually had the five-foot high animal cornered in a dark alley. One of the officers decided that this nonsense had to stop and he was going to take it in. He decided to handcuff it. With this, the kangaroo suddenly started screeching and became vicious. It punched the officers in the face and kicked them in the shins. The officers backed off and awaited reinforcements. Additional squad cars arrived and the kangaroo hopped down the street, jumped a fence and vanished.

This was just the beginning of a wave of sightings throughout Illinois and Wisconsin. A newspaper boy looked at it face to face after the creature was almost hit by a car near Belmont and Oak Park. Then it just hopped away. It was next seen in Chicago’s Schiller Woods. It was spotted again by a Plano police officer, just outside the city limits. He stated that the kangaroo jumped more than 8 feet from a cornfield onto the road. The following night it appeared again.

A half hour after the last Plano sighting, a kangaroo was reported 50 miles away, in Chicago. On November 3, the kangaroo was reported by Frank Kocherver in a forest preserve. On November 4, a truck driver spotted a kangaroo and deer in a nearby field. The driver checked for tracks and was convinced that his sighting was correct. On November 6, a truck driver near Lansing just missed hitting a kangaroo. There were also many sightings in Indiana a few days later.

In July 1975, a woman was traveling down the highway near Dalton City and saw a kangaroo alongside the road. She watched it as it hopped away into a cornfield and disappeared.

In 1980, a kangaroo was reported in San Fransisco’s Golden Gate Park in California. In 1981, a kangaroo was seen outside Asheville, North Carolina. Police and newspaper reporters chased it but failed to capture it.

Another sighting took place in Raleigh North Carolina in 1997, when a resident called police, reporting a kangaroo in her front yard. It was never captured.

Where do these kangaroos come from? The first explanation in every case is that it must have escaped from some circus or zoo. The problem is that in all the cases, no kangaroos were reported missing and kangaroos do not act as these vicious meat eating creatures, nor do they have the ability to suddenly appear and vanish. Actual evidence of phantom kangaroos is almost entirely limited to eye witnesses. There is one fuzzy photograph which was taken on April 24, 1978, in Waukesha, Wisconsin which shows a slumping figure that does look very much like a kangaroo. Some believe that the creature does exist but it is not a kangaroo at all, but some other unknown mysterious creature with attributes similar to a kangaroo. Others believe that they may be other worldly or from another dimension. For now we can only guess what actually happened and was seen by so many people across the U.S.

Visit the following websites for further information about Phantom Kangaroos:

http://www.corgibuddy.com/phantomkangaroos.html
http://www.icidal.com/xproject/archives/cryptozoology/phantomkangas.html
http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/articlekangaroos.shtml
http://www.occultopedia.com/a/american_kangaroos.htm

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