Kangaroos hop down my street every day or so. They eat your lawn, veggie patch and anything else that takes their fancy. They are environmentally friendly and let vegetation regenerate. 

The king kangaroo would stand at over two metres high and would kill you if you got too close. People around here hate them and will shoot them at any opportunity. Dickheads around here love to run them down in their four wheel drives, makes me sick at times. Roadkill, what for? Fucking nothing. 

I can’t eat them as once I got really sick but the details are gory so I won’t go into it except to say that it wasn’t the kangaroo steak that made me sick.

When it’s drought I leave water out for them but I don’t tell my neighbours as the shotguns would come from me. They eat so little compared to sheep and cattle. It’s the sheep and cattle that are ruining the river flats.

In the last week I’ve seen, snakes, turtles, roos, echidnas, wallabies and goannas. After 35 years in Adelaide I’m now the lucky one. I can look outside my side door and watch Rosellas, King Parrots, Major Mitchells, White Cockies, Wheat Birds, Kookaburras and have Sea Eagles, Owls, Hawks and other birds that stay high up in the gum trees. The only bird I don’t like is the Koel bird that has an awful cry and is a cuckoo. The Koel bird comes down from Indonesia each summer and is a pain in the arse. Lays it’s eggs in the nest of honey eaters. The hatched chick eats the other eggs in the nest then keeps the parents feeding it till it flies home. 

If I go down to the headland and can see whales going up and down the coast depending on the time of year, dolphins surfing and the local creek has flathead, bream, ducks and pelicans.

Geez, I’m lucky and I never realised it.

Written and authorised by Mark at a town near you.