Mother Killed in Traffic : A Fighting Chance for Baby Kangaroo

Carlton E. Forbes lives.

That’s the name--shortened to Carlton--that keepers at Sacramento’s city zoo have given to a baby kangaroo that survived its mother’s death on Interstate 5 here.

The mother, a 3-year-old named Lindsay, escaped from a temporary zoo enclosure late Tuesday afternoon, hopped about half a mile through a residential neighborhood and onto a stretch of I-5 that is named for Forbes, a late Caltrans chief engineer. There, the 60-pound marsupial was hit by a tractor-trailer rig.

Lindsay, actually a wallaroo, which is a small kangaroo, was taken to a nearby veterinary hospital at the University of California, Davis, where she was put to death after surgeons determined that the chances of saving her nearly severed leg were slim.

But Lindsay’s baby was thrown from the mother’s pouch and rescued by a passing motorist, a Sacramento carpenter who kept the 2-month-old male warm under his coat until help arrived.

The baby, which weighs about 1 1/2 pounds and measures about eight inches long--about the size of a small cat--was taken back to the zoo, christened Carlton, and then taken to a keeper’s home where he could be cared for around the clock.

Instead of a pouch, home for the nearly furless Carlton is now a pillowcase suspended over a bucket and warmed by a heating pad. He is being fed a non-dairy milk substitute through a bottle.

“We’ve simulated a pouch as closely as possible,” said Fred LaRue, general curator at the zoo. “It’s soft, it’s warm and dark.”

LaRue said Carlton’s condition is “guarded.”

Wallaroos can weigh up to about 150 pounds and grow to about four feet tall. They are usually gray with thick, coarse fur. With short front legs and long, powerful hindquarters, wallaroos can run--or hop--as fast as 50 m.p.h. and leap as far as 40 feet on one bound.

At birth, the peanut-sized wallaroo crawls through the mother’s fur to her pouch, where it nurses for three to four months. At that point, it begins moving in and out of the pouch for short periods. At about six months, the baby leaves the pouch altogether.

Zookeeper Jane Hansjergen said baby Carlton is vigorous, appears unhurt and should stand a good chance of surviving. The baby will be returned to the zoo within a day or so, she said.

“Our biggest problem is it’s just so young,” Hansjergen said. “We can’t supply the same kind of care as mothers can.”