“Be
Prepared” should be the photographer’s watchword as well
as the Scout motto. Before the days of camera phones, I had my
little Kodak with me at all times, except when I didn’t. Those
times there would always be a great picture that I didn’t get. You’d
think I’d have learned, but the camera was often
umbilicalled to the computer and I’d forget it when I left the
house.
A
few years ago as I drove through the Hills Forest in Western
Australia I saw three kangaroos. I gave them a passing glance,
assuming that it was Mom, last season’s baby, and the new
baby. I did my errand and returned along the same route where
I
saw the trio were again at the side of the road.
Turns
out it was not Mom and two babies. It was Dad, Mom and
baby.
I don’t know what Mom’s name was, but Dad’s was
clearly “Roger”. While he was doing his best to be
sure there were baby ‘roos for Christmas, Mom was unconcernedly
nibbling a clump of grass, and baby was sitting on the ground but had
his head in the pouch, having a sip from the milk bar.
The
scene gave a whole new slant to the phrase ‘casual sex’,
and made me consider whether having two distinct venues for
fertilisation and gestation was an improvement on the ‘one
place for all’ model.
Kangaroos
are strange and wonderful creatures which resemble other herbivores
in equivalent ecologies across the world. You look at deer, zebras,
kangaroos, alpacas and llamas and they all have very similar body
size, mass and facial structures, and they all fill a similar niche
in their local areas. (Okay, kangaroos aren’t quite
quadrupeds, but besides that.) Unlike the other creatures, kangaroos
no longer have an apex predator to keep them under control. Millennia
ago there were thylacines and thylacoleos, which one
supposes acted as a balance mechanism. You can see in your mind’s
eye a pack of Tasmanian tigers running down a boomer*, can’t
you? Or a tawny marsupial lion springing down from a rocky
outcropping?
Not
long after we moved up to the Perth Hills, we discovered that a small
mob of grey kangaroos lived in the State Forest cross the road from
us. For some months we saw little of them, except for occasional
glimpses as they bounded through the trees. After a while they began
frequenting our yard late at night. At first it was just piles of roo
poo that proved the visits, but one evening Gene came in from the
shed and asked, “Want to see my new friend?”
I
assumed it was the possum that came often and was so tame Gene could
scratch his ears. I followed into the dark yard and looked up into
the gum tree by the shed. No possum.
“Not
up there, over here,” Gene said, waving his torch towards the
woodpile. There stood a kangaroo as tall as he. It blinked at us
and returned to what it had been doing: eating the winter grass that
had sprung up on the edges of the culvert that in a good year would
carry our winter creek. I stepped behind the claret ash tree, just
in case the ‘roo was feeling bouncy, and set my camera for
‘flash’.
The
big grey animal moved slowly along the grassy area, and then hopped
down onto the driveway. I managed to get a couple of pictures of
him, not very good ones, but enough to prove that there are still
kangaroos almost in the Mundaring CBD. My sister lives in the wilds
of New Hampshire and often tells me of exotic visitors like eagles
and fishers; at last I’d have something more exciting than
bandicoots and parrots to report.
The
visitor loped off down the driveway and we went up the back walk and
into the house.
“I
wish I’d had my camera ready,” mused Gene.
“You
might still have a chance. The security light hasn’t come on
in the front yard—which means the ‘roo is still somewhere
at the side of the house,” I observed. “I suppose this
explains why the security lights come on in the middle of the night.
There is never anyone around when I get up to look, and I thought it
must be the wind.”
Gene
got his camera and went quietly out the front door, tripping the
security light as he went. He disappeared around the back of the
truck and I saw a couple of flashes from the camera, then he returned
rather more quickly than he had gone. “He’s in the side
yard and he’s got a friend!” he exclaimed. There was a
swish and a bounding noise and something moved on the far side of the
truck and we were again alone. One of the cats came out from under
the truck with her tail the size of a hearth brush, looking over her
shoulder as if to say “Did you see that?”
Next
morning I went out with a garden trowel and a bucket and collected
all the roo poo I could find. As I put it in my potted plants, I
planned the email to my sister, bragging about my organic garden
product home delivery service!
*(Millennials
take note, in this context a boomer is a large male kangaroo, not a
human born in 1947.)
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