Joey the Palm Beach pet kangaroo
A few weeks ago a reader wrote about his memories of growing up in Palm Beach. He told an entertaining tale about having a pet kangaroo who “seemed unable or unwilling to understand that only members” of the Coral Beach Club were supposed to attend the parties on the beach.
Life magazine photo
It turns out that Joey the kangaroo was a Palm Beach celebrity, featured twice in Life magazine (here and here — scroll up at the second link to see the photo of Joey playing dodge ball), and the instigation of an ordinance banning as pets any animals that weren’t dogs, cats, canaries or parakeets.
The ordinance was not popular with everyone in Palm Beach. Several prominent residents signed a petition to let Joey stay, and four-year-old Caroline Kennedy called Joey her friend.
The ordinance was modified after Joey’s owners, Walter and Tanya Brooks, challenged it in court, but the Town of Palm Beach still has an animal ordinance prohibiting exotic animals as pets and listing “serious annoyance” to neighbors as a violation.
While the court decided his fate, Joey became a popular resident of Masten’s Doghouse on Military Trail in West Palm Beach.
Joey eventually found a permanent home at the Dreher Park Zoo where he died in relative obscurity several years later.
Tags: animals, ordinances, Palm Beach
I remember Joey when I was a kid. We always got a kick of of hearing about him. And I remember seeing him more than once at the Dreher Park Zoo. I had forgotten all about the little guy!!!