true story: i love me some elvis.

and not just young elvis. or movie elvis. all elvis.

as a little girl, i sincerely and truly with every fiber of my being believed he was alive.

and yet, if we’ve learned anything from our discovery of tippi hedren’s lion or vanilla ice’s wallaroo, it’s that celebrities can surprise you.

i have loved elvis for decades, and only just discovered he once had a wallaby.

what’s a wallaby, you ask?

well, it’s any animal belonging to the kangaroo family but smaller than a kangaroo and which “has not been designated otherwise”, which is kind of clear as mud. what we do know, thanks to vanilla ice, is that when a wallaby mates with a kangaroo… voilà!  wallaroos are born.

and in 1957, as a joke, a hollywood booking agent sent elvis one:

he gave it to overton zoo.

companionship was apparently a problem.

and then, sad story (with a creepy headline), 13 august 1962:

that was connecticut. the tennessee papers were a bit more revealing:

WALLABY MURDER AS REVENGE. snap.

elvis seems not to have made any comment.