When Kangaroos Attack

Or, The Kangaroo that Loved Me…

Cute, huh? when I first sent this picture around to friends, they all exclaimed, “Wow, aren’t they dangerous? How did you get that close to one?”

Actually, the real trick is getting away from them. Yes, you hear all the stories about the boxing kangaroo and blah blah blah. I read that somewhere too. I also read that those kind are the big (huge, giant, monstrous) western desert kangaroos, which I only saw one, once, living alone in Carnarvon Gorge with a bunch of normal-sized eastern grey roos, and it’s like seeing an camel next to a herd of golden retrievers. As Justine said, roos are actually really gentle. Like marsupial deer.

But they still scare the crap outta me. Let me explain…

So Sailor Boy and I are hanging out in this park in Australia that was also the home of a severely spoiled kangaroo (pictured). Oh, so gentle, oh so cute, oh so manipulative when it looks up at you with those big brown eyes. I can imagine every picnicker in the park gave our buddy here a nip from their basket. Yogi had nothing on the roo. It was hounding us from the moment we stepped out of our car. It followed us around. We had to watch our billy can that evening, since it tried to steal our curried lentils and couscous.

Cute, right? Harmless, right?

Hardly.

Like victims in all horror flicks, we were oblivious to the signs until it was too late. Far too late to escape from

Late that evening, I was headed down the darkened path to the lavatory, all alone, my little headlamp and it’s weak, bluish LED light my only companion, trying not to think about the many, many poisonous creatures that, thanks to Bill Bryson and Steve Irwin (bless his soul), I knew called this large, arid continent home. I was also trying my best not to think about the rather significant chance of finding a deadly Cane Toad waiting for me in the toilet. The Cane toad is so deadly that if something makes the mistake of eating it and dies, then soemthing else makes the mistake of eating that corpse, it also dies, and so on and so forth and etc., until you get what is called a “death pile” and no, I’m not making that up.

I was not, given all of these naturally deadly creatures around me, thinking of the other thing that could kill me, which was, of course, your garden variety campfire story villain, either hook-handed or full functional, who likes to lie in wait in secluded park areas to leap upon and attack cute young blonde foreigners who make the mistake of walking down dark paths without their boyfriends’ protection.

And, just when it occurred to me to consider this possible threat, I heard an ominous thumping behind me. Thump. Thump. Thump. Like the beating of a tribal drum. Were there cannibals in Queensland forests? How about scary Hills Have Eyes-style mutant serial killers? Thump, Thump THUMP! The sound got louder and louder and louder… it was right behind me! I whirled.

The kangaroo. Again. Following me INTO THE BATHROOM.

And that wasn’t all. When SB and I returned from our evening ablutions, it was to find that we were barred from the entrance to our home. The kangaroo had set himself up as a sentinel outside our tent.

And nothing would get rid of him. he wasn’t scared by loud noises, or bright lights, or even quick motions in his general direction. Here he is scoffing at our attempts to squeeze past him. the standoff went on for hours — but then again, anything seems like hours when you’re being eaten alive by mosquitoes and wondering exactly how many deadly Cane Toads are making that croaking sound in the vicinity of your left ankle.

Finally, I feinted right, while SB dove for the tent. In the confusion, we both managed to make it inside, but it was quite a while before the desperate pawing at the flap subsided.

We thought it was safe, but the next morning, when SB emerged, the kangaroo lay in wait on the other side of the car.

We barely made it out alive.

Later in the trip, we had another scary run-in.

We were out in the outback, checking out some cool lava tubes, and wound up in a park that had recently experienced a huge forest fire. The sight was breathtaking, especially as the road we traveled had served as a fire break. On one side of the highway, you had your average bush gum tree scrub as far as the eye could see. On the other, nothing but flat blackness, broken occasionally by glimpses of red earth.

When we checked into the caravan park that evening, the clerk told us that the fire had displaced many herds of kangaroos and other critters. At the time, I remember nodding vaguely and wondering how much daylight we had left at this equatorial latitude in order to set up the tent and cook our lentils. Which we did without much fanfare, and headed off to bed.

At dawn the next morning, I remember awakening with an odd feeling in my stomach. Worried that the lentils hadn’t agreed with me, I opened the zip of the tent, and looked outside.

Do you know how to close a zipper in complete silence? I learned to do so that very day. Wordlessly, I woke SB. Wordlessly, I poined out through the opaque flap. Wordlessly, he signaled to me that he hadn’t the slightest clue what I was saying.

What I was saying was, obviously, “In the night, we’ve both been transported into the closing scene of the little-known sequel to the Hitchcock thriller, The Birds. The sequel is called, The Roos.” I proceeded to mouth same.

There were about a hundred kangaroos standing around outside the tent. Given my hereditary inclination for exaggeration, SB merely laughed and undid the zip. The roos stirred. that taught him to believe me. SB proceeded to Rod Taylor it out of the tent and over to our friend’s cabin. I proceeded to stay frickin’ put. eventually, the equatorial sun rose over the desert, and the resulting heat drove them into the shade.

But I would never let down my guard.

And finally, because I’ve never quite found a reasonable excuse to show this to anyone before, but because I’ve now brilliantly managed to combine Australia AND Alfred in one post, I shall now share one of my favorite pictures from our Oceania Adventure, taken at the Brisbane museum, entitled, “Diana as Tippi Hedren”: