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

A small wallaby was still missing Monday from an eastern Ontario zoo after escaping during a snowstorm last week. However, there was a suspected wallaby sighting near Westport, Ont., Sunday night.

Owners Carla and Gary Saunders are now offering a $1,000 reward for the safe return of Wendell, a three-year-old Bennett's red-necked wallaby who has been on the loose for five days from Saunders Country Critters in Oxford Station, Ont., about 45 kilometres south of Ottawa.

Wendell, who was born in captivity and hand-raised by the Saunders in an artificial pouch, escaped after a tree fell and breached the fence around his pen during a storm last Tuesday night.

As of Monday morning, the last suspected sighting of the wallaby was made by Tammis Pringle on Sunday night near Crow Lake, about 80 kilometres west of Oxford Station. She saw an animal at the side of the road as she was driving home from her job in Westport, Ont., around 6 p.m.

"And as I got close enough to it, it kind of sat back on its haunches and it looked at me," Pringle said. She said she wasn't sure what the animal was, but thought of Wendell as she passed it.

She turned around less than 50 metres later, but when she did so, it was gone.

Gary Saunders said that before Pringle's sighting, the wallaby, which weighs about 20 kilograms and is about one metre tall, was last spotted Saturday night in Lombardy, outside Smiths Falls.

Deer hunting season opened Monday morning, and Saunders hopes a group of hunters will see him.

"They've all got radios. Hopefully they can surround him and catch him."

Won't go hungry

Saunders said he's not worried about Wendell going hungry or thirsty as there are lots of alfalfa fields, apple orchards and fresh water sources around, but he fears the wallaby could get hit by a car or fall prey to wolves or dogs.

Wendell had previously been seen near Athens on Thursday night, then Frankville.

Saunders Country Critters is home to 120 animals, including llamas, ring-tailed lemurs, fennec foxes and sulcata desert tortoises. It breeds many of the animals to sell to other zoos.

Wallabies and kangaroos are marsupials native to Australia that raise their young in pouches on their bodies.