Kangaroos!

Oh hey, remember how I went to AUSTRALIA! a month ago and have yet to tell you very much about all of my wonderful, amazing, and fabulous adventures?  Well, 1400+ photos and a crazy July have sort of held all of that recounting up a bit.  (What is it about a return from vacation that just propels you immediately back into reality?  You drop your bags one night and bam - it's back to the daily routine the very next day.)

There are plenty of tales and photos to come, of course, but for now, let me share a quick little video I took during one of the best moments of my life thus far.  And that would be....feeding a kangaroo.  Or, many kangaroos as it happened.

'Roos are so common over there they're viewed sort of how we view deer over here.  I'd read this in countless books but didn't really believe it for myself until I set foot on the continent.  And even then I still shrieked every time we passed a "'Roo Crossing" sign...and went positively nutty when we actually passed kangaroos IN THE WILD outside of Melbourne.  My travel buddy and I made my Australian friend, Belinda, pull the car over so we could see them out in the field; both of us standing in awe as they watched us for a few minutes for bounding away.  I caught a glimpse of one of them hopping along in a field one late afternoon at dusk as the train we were on made our way through an open field.  One night, in near pitch blackness, we even came face to face with one in the bloody road, though thankfully he was in the other lane and bounded in front of us one we were stopped.  Even the kangaroo road kill, while depressing, was also mystifying and amazing to Hannah and myself because, again, kang.a.roos.

One morning we drove outside of Sydney to a wildlife preserve where kangaroos wandered about freely and people could feed them ice cream cones filled with pellets and alfalfa.  We saw wallabies and koalas and the most deadly snake in the world and even the Tasmania devil, all of which thrilled me to no end.  But of course, my favorite moment, was when I first encountered the 'roos face to face...or face to, um, hip I guess.  I would later learn that the 'roos I saw that day were of the smaller variety -- the ones we saw in the wild were close to 6 feet tall when standing upright.

As you might expect there were plenty of little Aussie school children milling about this preserve on the morning we were there, all of them ready with their cones in hand to greet these kangaroos too.  And I will also proudly admit to, at 33, being as giddy and overjoyed to meet these strange, unique creatures as those little school kids were.  I mean, need I say it again?  Kangaroos!

 
During the midst of the 'Roo feeding frenzy, I took a quick video.  I was continually annoyed with the damn pigeon (turns out they are a nuisance in Oz just as they are in the States) but really, throughout that entire day, I just found myself utterly enamoured with these creatures that until this trip I'd only glimpsed pictures and tales of from story books and nature programs.  As we made our way back to Sydney later that afternoon I found myself grinning from ear to ear.  "Today, on a random Thursday in June, I fed a kangaroo." I said.  "How many people are lucky enough to be able to say that?"