Carla Saunders holds a wallaby similar to Wendell, the one who is still missing. (Rebecca Zandbergen/CBC)

A small kangaroo-like animal that escaped from an eastern Ontario private zoo earlier this week has been spotted around 60 kilometres away, near Athens, Ont.

A five-member search party headed to Redford Road in Athens Friday morning to look for Wendell, a Bennett's red-necked wallaby missing since Wednesday from its pen at Saunders Country Critters in Oxford Station, Ont., about 45 kilometres south of Ottawa.

A tree fell and breached the fence around Wendell's enclosure during the season's first snowstorm.

Carla Saunders, who owns the zoo, said two vehicles with carriers, nets, bags of food, and artificial kangaroo pouches planned to be in Athens, which is southwest of Oxford Mills, before dawn.

"So hopefully we can catch him before he starts moving," she said. "Perhaps he'll hop into a pouch."

Wendell, who is three years old and about thigh-high, has lived in captivity since his birth and was hand-raised in an artificial pouch. The eight-hectare zoo is home to 120 animals, including llamas, ring-tailed lemurs, fennec foxes and sulcata desert tortoises.