Kangaroos: An A to Z Challenge Shenanigan

By - April 12, 2013

For the letter K, I could think of nothing more obvious to talk with you all about than the serious public service announcement I have to give you today.  It is something that no one should walk around not knowing, lest you encounter one of the most dangerous beasts of all time and be unaware of the potentially fatal situation you are in.  I’m referring, of course, to one of my greatest foes, an enemy I shall spend my entire life seeking to smite angrily.  He is, alas, the kangaroo.

Many people believe these marsupials to be adorable—maybe even cuddly, a notion no-doubt perpetuated by Winnie the Pooh (whose own credibility I seriously doubt, considering he lives in the home of a Mr. Sanders, someone we have never seen even though we have seen Winnie’s ever-growing stomach.  But I digress.) and his “lovable” friends Kanga and Roo.  But no matter what cartoons may try to tell you, I know the truth about what bloodthirsty, vicious monsters they really are.  After all, they do bear a striking resemblance to the velociraptor, do they not?  Trust me on this: if you see a kangaroo, slowly back away from him. Do not make eye contact. Do not let him see your weaknesses. Do not try to woo him with flattery or baked goods.  Do not attempt to dress him in your flannel bathrobe and call him Juniper. Just slowly back away.

You see, I have been kicked by a kangaroo, so I know what they are capable of. 

Before I became a writer, I worked as a veterinary technician in a hospital’s exotics department.  We once treated an adolescent kangaroo from the Birmingham Zoo.  Now, chalk it up to raging marsupial hormones, but while we were restraining the overgrown mammalian pogo stick to check his injured leg, the damn thing reared back and kicked me clean across the room.

Well, that was it; I'd had enough of his lip. I jumped up and prepared to battle him to the death (Side note: And by "jumped up and prepared to battle him," I mean, "the others in the ward carried me to the car and took me to the emergency room, where the Triage Nurse looked at us like we were insane as the British vet I worked for explained to them that I had 'been kicked by a bloody kangaroo!'").  Stupid kangaroo.  What did I ever do to him?

So, now you know the awful truth about my and the kangaroo's sordid past. You may scoff, but I'm telling you, when the guy who named the species tacked “roo” onto the end of the name, he was really trying to say, "Rude."  It was just that the kangaroo killed him before he finished!

Do you have any special stories about when (foreign, pouched) animals attack?  Have you ever had a dangerous animal encounter?