The Impenetrable Mind of a Kangaroo

The dog was screeching, terrified. There was a clattering of falling garden tools and more distressed howls from their old kelpie. The couple stopped eating, looked at each other and ran to the carport.

A grey kangaroo, a big old buck as tall as the man, stood near the car. The dog was in her kennel, shivering.

The man advanced towards the roo and raised his arms.

“SHOO! GET OUT!” he shouted.

The roo shifted a little but stood its ground. The man picked up a hoe and marched towards the buck.

“GET OUT!”

The roo stood taller and regarded the man. He pushed the hoe into the roo’s ribcage. The roo turned away but lost its balance on the slippery concrete. It hit the floor and grunted. Its big feet and long black claws scratched the car as it tried to stand.

“Oh, it’s old!” the woman cried. “Let it get away!” The man drew back.

The roo was old. Its eyes were cloudy as if with cataracts and its fur dull and thin. The skin behind its eyes and below its jaw had sunk deep into hollow spaces between bones. The roo regained its balance and using its forelegs to support itself, stumped along the driveway.

“Tessa, come here!” The dog, fretful, crawled to the woman. “You were frightened, weren’t you? It’s alright now,” she said, kneeling down to pat the elderly kelpie.

Her husband walked towards the roo to drive it away from the house. He kept his distance; he could see the roo was sick or injured and he didn’t want to cause it any more distress. Why had the old kangaroo come into the carport? It wasn’t raining or cold, so the roo wasn’t seeking shelter. And it was strange for a kangaroo to come anywhere near a dog.

In the six years the couple had lived on their property in the hills backing onto the Warrumbungle National Park they had seen plenty of kangaroos in the paddocks near the house but never had one come under the carport. Tessa was too old to chase them away and the man hadn’t recently been out shooting at the rabbits that wrecked his wife’s vegetable garden so perhaps the roo sensed it had less to fear. But why come so close to the house? He could understand the old buck wanting the green grass of the lawn but to risk encountering the dog and humans seemed bizarre. It couldn’t be thirsty—there was water in the creek. What did the kangaroo want? Did animals get a form of dementia? Did their instincts grow indistinct and lead them astray?

The old buck stared at the man and for a second he sensed the kangaroo’s reproach for his unnecessary enmity. But that was crazy. Nevertheless, he felt he’d somehow failed an animal in need. He groaned and clapped his hands on his thighs and went back to his wife and Tessa. In the car windows he saw himself reflected: grey-haired, troubled, thin and old. His wife was still patting and reassuring their dog.

“Can you move Tessa’s kennel around the back?” she asked.

“The kennel’s heavy,” he said. “And I don’t think the roo’ll return.”

“I’ll put her basket near the back door, just in case,” she said.

That night in bed the man spoke of the look the kangaroo had given him: a look, almost, of confused disappointment.

“There might’ve been something I could do to help,” he said.

His wife said, “Remember Annie the goat? She’d never come to us when we gave the goats our kitchen scraps; she always stood apart. But one day I was hanging washing on the line she came to the fence and bleated and she didn’t have her baby with her and I thought she was acting strange so I climbed the fence and she led me across the paddock to her kid. It was dead. I’m sure she came to me for help.”

They lay in silence.

The man had heard the story before. He turned on his side, ready for sleep. “I don’t understand myself at times,” he said, yawning, “so I don’t know how I can understand a kangaroo or a goat.”

The next morning, he was reading in the lounge room when he heard his wife scream. He ran to the laundry. She had the washing basket held high to shield her face from the big kangaroo. Taller than the woman, it looked at her as an elderly scholar might look at a relic. The man grabbed the basket from his wife and stood in front of her so she could escape indoors. She ran, petrified. The man lifted the cane basket and jerked it towards the roo’s face. The roo turned and edged away from the house. It stood ten metres away on the lawn and again regarded the man.

“What do you want?” he shouted. Was the roo attracted by the house or—was it possible—by the old couple themselves? First in the carport, and now at the laundry door. The roo hadn’t been aggressive: it didn’t attack the dog or try to scratch his wife even though it could have done terrible damage with its huge claws. The man advanced towards the roo, holding the basket high in front of him to appear more imposing. The roo shifted a few metres but seemed reluctant to leave.

“Why don’t you go bush and rejoin your mob? If you stay around here it won’t end well! GET!” he shouted, but the kangaroo barely registered the noise. Perhaps it was deaf, the man thought. After all, he could hardly hear a thing without his hearing-aid.

He went back inside and found his wife standing at the kitchen window, drinking a glass of water and looking at the buck.

“The grandkids are arriving tomorrow,” she said. “We can’t have that big kangaroo around when they’re here. What if it attacks them? They’d get mauled!”

The man sighed. “If I knew what it wanted, I’d do something. But I don’t understand what it wants.”

“You might have to shoot it.”

The man rubbed the back of his neck. Neither he nor his wife were real farmers. Their property was a retirement place: a hobby farm. They weren’t like the people who’d lived all their life on the land. He was a good enough shot but he’d only killed rabbits; he’d never shot a kangaroo but he knew his .22 would do the job, especially at close range. Maybe he could chase it away with the ute. He could honk the horn. But would that work? Probably not. It would only distress them both and be for nothing; they’d look at each other and both would feel tormented and confused. And his wife was right: it couldn’t be around when the kids were visiting.

“What do you think?” she asked.

He covered his face with his hands. “I could drag it away with the ute. Take it across the creek and way up the paddock.”

“The kids’ll be here early tomorrow. I’m going into town to get a few things this afternoon. Do you think you could do it then?” She hated the sound of gunfire.

He rubbed the back of his neck again. “Yeah. If it’s still around.” He watched her hand shaking as she refilled her glass. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. But I got a fright. I felt ambushed, like it was expecting me and wanted to be close.”

“It’s not … stalking us. It’s after something but I can’t imagine what.”

“It can’t stay.”

“I know. I’ll get my gun.”

After lunch, he cleaned the rifle and when his wife drove to town he loaded the magazine.

The roo was on the lawn near the front of the house. The man sneaked towards it and hid behind a maybush only ten metres from the buck—he could see it was quivering. The roo lowered its head to graze. The man raised his rifle, aimed carefully for the back of the skull and fired. The roo’s head snapped sideways but its body stayed as it was: bowed down to feed, balanced on its big hind legs and forelegs. Its head settled on the grass like a supplicant as a crown of blood formed over its eyes and ears.

The man went closer. His shot had been precise: the brain was shattered. That was what he’d wanted—a quick, painless death.

He put the gun back in its strong-box, then got the ute and backed it close to the kangaroo. He wiped the sweat from his hands with a rag.

Ants were already exploring the kangaroo’s eyes and smashed skull.

He knotted a rope around its hind legs, tied the rope to the towbar, and dragged the roo over the dusty paddock, across the culvert, through the shallow running water of the creek and around a rocky outcrop to a gully. There he stopped, untied the roo, and used a shovel to lever the heavy body into a hollow.

The breeze picked up and stirred the sheoak trees around him. The man lifted his eyes to the sun shining through the thread-like leaves. He looked for a few seconds at the bright, beautiful light. He closed his eyes and listened to the breeze in the trees. The moving air and the leaves formed an immense wind harp that produced soft, shimmering high notes: maybe, he thought, the trees were green giants that sometimes made music and swayed with the sound. Standing up with his eyes closed made him feel wobbly, so he opened his eyes and leaned on the shovel for support. At the feet of the trees, the rounded boulders seemed content with the paradox they contained: enduring hardness in soft, pillowy forms. The water of the creek gleamed in the sun; during droughts the bed was dry but the water was still there running hidden underground along a thousand unknown pathways: more like spirit than matter.

At times, he saw familiar things but they seemed strange, as if some profound sundering between him and the world had taken place but he only occasionally became conscious of it. It was as if his knowledge of the world was diminishing as he got older.

He looked at the kangaroo’s corpse. “Sorry, mate,” he said. “It’s not that I don’t care, there’s just so much I don’t understand.”

Using the shovel as a scythe, he cut bracken ferns and placed them over the kangaroo’s body.

In an hour or so his wife would return. She’d ask if he’d done the deed, he’d say yes, and nothing more would be said about it. Tomorrow, their daughter, her husband and their three young children would arrive for a week’s holiday. As always, he’d be impressed by the way they seemed to know exactly what they had to do and the best way to do it.