Kangaroo Quotes

Horton, the kangaroo has sent Vlad!' Vlad? I know two Vlads. One is a cute little bunny that brings me cookies. The other is bad Vlad. Which Vlad?' Which one do you think?' Bad Vlad?' Good call.

How true, how true" said the Sour Kangaroo, "And from now on, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm going to protect them with you!" And the Young Kangaroo in her pouch said "Me too!

Go to the Black Sea, meet new people, see beautiful places, get killed by a mutant carnivorous kangaroo goat. One item off my bucket list.

I have no fear of losing my life - if I have to save a koala or a crocodile or a kangaroo or a snake, mate, I will save it.

How small the cosmos (a kangaroo's pouch would hold it), how paltry and puny in comparison to human consciousness, to a single individual recollection, and its expression in words!

Listen, Frank Zhang has moves. He's probably gonna turn into a kangaroo and do some marsupial jujitsu on their ugly faces.

Cung said, “I have researched Vietnamese People fleeing to the land of the Uc da Loi! On the 26th of April 1976, the first boat carrying Vietnamese refugees arrived in Darwin. (Uc da Loi means Big Red Rat. The Vietnamese People named Australians as such because of the red kangaroo painted on the sides of Australian military vehicles. They did not know what a kangaroo was and so, they thought it was a rat. Hence the name of Uc da Loi.) (A Gracious Enemy & After the War Volume Two)

Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas! / You really are beautiful! Pearls, / harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins!

America Is A Gun England is a cup of tea. France, a wheel of ripened brie. Greece, a short, squat olive tree. America is a gun. Brazil is football on the sand. Argentina, Maradona's hand. Germany, an oompah band. America is a gun. Holland is a wooden shoe. Hungary, a goulash stew. Australia, a kangaroo. America is a gun. Japan is a thermal spring. Scotland is a highland fling. Oh, better to be anything than America as a gun.

If there's any guy crazy enough to attack me, I'm going to show him the end of the world -- close up. I'm going to let him see the kingdom come with his own eyes. I'm going to send him straight to the southern hemisphere and let the ashes of death rain all over him and the kangaroos and the wallabies.

I'm so glad you're back. We need you here. I mean...Burnett's okay, but...he's not you." Holiday arched a brow. "I hear he wasn't even himself for a while there." Miranda frowned. "He told you about the whole kangaroo thing, didn't he." "Yeah," Holiday said, and her brows tightened. "And I must say, I'm very disappointed with you, Miranda" she reached out and gripped Miranda's hand. "The next time you turn him into anything, do it when I'm here to enjoy it." -Taken at Dusk

Besides my professional goals, I have a couple of private ones, my man. One of those is to pet a kangaroo before I leave Australia. I understand there's lots of Eastern Grays around this area. What do you say? Are you in?' Bergman looked at him like he'd just made the worst financial investment of his life. 'Kangaroos are wild animals. I've heard they claw like girl fighters and kick like jackhammers. You're going to get your skull crushed.' Cole held up a finger. 'Or I'm going to pet a kangaroo. How cool would that be?

As far as one knows of heroines from history. I'm capable of a great jerk, an effort, and then a relaxation—but steady every-day goodness is beyond me. I must be a moral kangaroo!

The subject was as easy to spot as a kangaroo in a dinner jacket

I've been to Australia. I've met the devil drank beer and snogged kangaroos.

There was nothing to it. The Super Chief was on time, as it almost always is, and the subject was as easy to spot as a kangaroo in a dinner jacket.

If God meant for us to carry baggage around, he would have made our skin have little pouches like kangaroos. Or maybe he would have just made it so that each and every one of us were born with huge- ass shoulders to carry the load. Clearly, we weren’t made to carry the weight of the world, kinda makes you wonder why we do it anyway, huh?

Some have argued that because the universe is like a clock, there must be a Clockmaker. As the eighteenth-century British empiricist David Hume pointed out, this is a slippery argument, because there is nothing that is really perfectly analogous to the universe as a whole, unless it's another universe, so we shouldn't try to pass off anything that is just a part of this universe. Why a clock anyhow? Hume asks. Why not say the universe is analogous to a kangaroo? After all, both are organically interconnected systems. But the kangaroo analogy would lead to a very different conclusion about the origin of the universe: namely, that it was born of another universe after that universe had sex with a third universe.

Okay, let’s put it this way. I would like to sleep with you. But it’s alright if I don’t sleep with you. What I’m saying is I’d like to be as fair as possible. I don’t want to force anything on anybody, any more than I’d want anything forced on me. It’s enough that I feel your presence or see your commas swirling around me.

He smells good. Why does he have to smell good? I’m so annoyed. He’s got a hint of stubble across his jaw and I find myself wondering what that would feel like pressed against my neck. Stop thinking. I need to stop thinking. Or start thinking about something else. Like orphaned kangaroos.

All was at peace while Batty picked flowers and hummed a song about kangaroos.

In an earlier stage of our development most human groups held to a tribal ethic. Members of the tribe were protected, but people of other tribes could be robbed or killed as one pleased. Gradually the circle of protection expanded, but as recently as 150 years ago we did not include blacks. So African human beings could be captured, shipped to America, and sold. In Australia white settlers regarded Aborigines as a pest and hunted them down, much as kangaroos are hunted down today. Just as we have progressed beyond the blatantly racist ethic of the era of slavery and colonialism, so we must now progress beyond the speciesist ethic of the era of factory farming, of the use of animals as mere research tools, of whaling, seal hunting, kangaroo slaughter, and the destruction of wilderness. We must take the final step in expanding the circle of ethics. -

Isn`t man an amazing animal? He kills wildlife - birds, kangaroos, deer, all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice, foxes, and dingoes - by the millions in order to protect his domestic animals and their feed. Then he kills domestic animals by the billions and eats them. This in turn kills man by the million, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative - and fatal - health conditions like heart disease, kidney disease, and cancer. So then man tortures and kills millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter at the absurdity of man, who kills so easily and so violently, and once a year sends out a card praying for 'Peace on Earth.

With regard to religion, finally, it may be briefly said that she believed in God in much the same way as she believed in Australia. For she had no doubts whatever as to the existence of either; and she went to church on Sunday in much the same spirit as she would look at a kangaroo in the zoological gardens; for kangaroos came from Australia.

I was also sick of my neighbors, as most Parisians are. I now knew every second of the morning routine of the family upstairs. At 7:00 am alarm goes off, boom, Madame gets out of bed, puts on her deep-sea divers’ boots, and stomps across my ceiling to megaphone the kids awake. The kids drop bags of cannonballs onto the floor, then, apparently dragging several sledgehammers each, stampede into the kitchen. They grab their chunks of baguette and go and sit in front of the TV, which is always showing a cartoon about people who do nothing but scream at each other and explode. Every minute, one of the kids cartwheels (while bouncing cannonballs) back into the kitchen for seconds, then returns (bringing with it a family of excitable kangaroos) to the TV. Meanwhile the toilet is flushed, on average, fifty times per drop of urine expelled. Finally, there is a ten-minute period of intensive yelling, and at 8:15 on the dot they all howl and crash their way out of the apartment to school.” (p.137)

A keener interest in trinkets of self-adornment than in people is a symptom of alienation.

Kangaroo farts, as fate would have it, don’t contain methane.

I could not eat a kangaroo. But many fine Australians do. Those with cookbooks as well as boomerangs Prefer him in tasty kangaroo-meringues.

Don't ask why the elephants wear such large shoes, And why the kangaroos are reborn kidnappers, And why the sailing birds are all Romantics.

Child, the moon is very lovely tonight. I just saw a kangaroo. I guess the refugees hadn’t eaten them all.

So Daemon can do that too? Morphing into a kangaroo if he wanted to?" Dee laughed. "Daemon can do about anything. He's one of the most powerful of us. Most of us can do one or two things easily - the rest is a struggle. Everything is easy for him." "He's just so awesome," I muttered. "Once he actually moved the house a little bit," Dee said, nose wrinkled. "He totally broke the foundation.

On May 26th, 2003, Aaron Ralston was hiking, a boulder fell on his right hand, he waited four days, he then amputated his own arm with a pocketknife. On New Year’s Eve, a woman was bungee jumping, the cord broke, she fell into a river and had to swim back to land in crocodile-infested waters with a broken collarbone. Claire Champlin was smashed in the face by a five-pound watermelon being propelled by a slingshot. Mathew Brobst was hit by a javelin. David Striegl was actually punched in the mouth by a kangaroo. The most amazing part of these stories is when asked about the experience they all smiled, shrugged and said “I guess things could’ve been worse.” So go ahead, tell me you’re having a bad day. Tell me about the traffic. Tell me about your boss. Tell me about the job you’ve been trying to quit for the past four years. Tell me the morning is just a townhouse burning to the ground and the snooze button is a fire extinguisher. Tell me the alarm clock stole the keys to your smile, drove it into 7 am and the crash totaled your happiness. Tell me. Tell me how blessed are we to have tragedy so small it can fit on the tips of our tongues. When Evan lost his legs he was speechless. When my cousin was assaulted she didn’t speak for 48 hours. When my uncle was murdered, we had to send out a search party to find my father’s voice. Most people have no idea that tragedy and silence often have the exact same address. When your day is a museum of disappointments, hanging from events that were outside of your control, when you feel like your guardian angel put in his two weeks notice two months ago and just decided not to tell you, when it seems like God is just a babysitter that’s always on the phone, when you get punched in the esophagus by a fistful of life. Remember, every year two million people die of dehydration. So it doesn’t matter if the glass is half full or half empty. There’s water in the cup. Drink it and stop complaining. Muscle is created by lifting things that are designed to weigh us down. When your shoulders are heavy stand up straight and call it exercise. Life is a gym membership with a really complicated cancellation policy. Remember, you will survive, things could be worse, and we are never given anything we can’t handle. When the whole world crumbles, you have to build a new one out of all the pieces that are still here. Remember, you are still here. The human heart beats approximately 4,000 times per hour and each pulse, each throb, each palpitation is a trophy, engraved with the words “You are still alive.” You are still alive. So act like it.

Burnett let out a low growl and motioned for the agent to leave. Then he glanced back at Miranda. "How were you able to pull this off?" Miranda shrugged. "I don't know." The girl's green eyes grew a sheen of tears. "They were going to hurt Della and Kylie. I panicked and just did it." Della found her chest filling up with warmth. Kylie reached over and held Miranda's hand. "And you did a great job," Kylie said. "I'm so proud of you." "Me, too," Della added. "Group hug," Miranda said, holding out her arms. "No damn hugs!" Burnett snapped. "You can undo it, right?" he asked. "I'm pretty sure I can." "Oh, hell!" He raked a hand over his face. "Try to do it. Try really hard. I don't think our jail is set up to house kangaroos.

Every major city has a section like this one. If a piebald dwarf with advanced leprosy wants to have sex with a kangaroo and a teenage choir, he'll find his way here and get a room. When he's done he might take the whole gang next door for a cup of Cuban coffee and a medianoche sandwich. Nobody would care, as long as he tipped.

Whenever a kangaroo puts his paws on your shoulder and gives you a big grin, that is the time to leave.

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We know that there are many animals on this continent not found in the Old World. These must have been carried from here to the ark, and then brought back afterwards. Were the peccary, armadillo, ant-eater, sloth, agouti, vampire-bat, marmoset, howling and prehensile-tailed monkey, the raccoon and muskrat carried by the angels from America to Asia? How did they get there? Did the polar bear leave his field of ice and journey toward the tropics? How did he know where the ark was? Did the kangaroo swim or jump from Australia to Asia? Did the giraffe, hippopotamus, antelope and orang-outang journey from Africa in search of the ark? Can absurdities go farther than this?

After all, when ‘the Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become’ He resolved to ‘wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created – and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground – for I regret that I have made them’ (Genesis 6:7). The Bible thinks it is perfectly all right to destroy all animals as punishment for the crimes of Homo sapiens, as if the existence of giraffes, pelicans and ladybirds has lost all purpose if humans misbehave. The Bible could not imagine a scenario in which God repents having created Homo sapiens, wipes this sinful ape off the face of the earth, and then spends eternity enjoying the antics of ostriches, kangaroos and panda bears.

It would seem that marsupials are poor imitations of full-fledged mammals. Their inadequacy gives them a certain appeal; we’re touched by it.

For a moment they all looked at Dermot incredulously, as if he'd just announced he was going to birth a kangaroo.

What's the matter with you anyway?" Riesenfeld shouts "You look like a moon-struck kangaroo!

As far as he could see, the drawings were simply alive. They might be colored earth on rock, but they were as alive as the kangaroo that'd just hopped away.

Do not make the mistake of assuming that because we’re women we’ll eventually want children. We aren’t kangaroos—this internal pouch isn’t one we all feel instinctively compelled to fill.

You have no spirit of culinary adventure. You need to be more like that snarky guy on the Travel Channel. He goes all over the world eating kangaroo a**holes and snail throw-up. He'd eat anything. He don't care how sick he gets. He's another one of my role models, except he needs ironing.

First they done a lecture on temperance; but they didn't make enough for them both to get drunk on. Then in another village they started a dancing-school; but they didn't know no more how to dance than a kangaroo does; so the first prance they made the general public jumped in and pranced them out of town. Another time they tried to go at yellocution; but they didn't yellocute long till the audience got up and give them a solid good cussing, and made them skip out.

I am the kangaroo of love. Do you question it? You can take your skepticism and stuff it straight down my pouch.

Pursuit of happiness is like chasing a moving target—a target stuck to the belly of a frolicsome kangaroo.

The kangaroo has a double penis - one for week days and one for holidays.

After people reached Australia, that continent lost its giant kangaroos, its ‘marsupial lion’, and other giant marsupials.

There,” Annie said. “You look just like a mother kangaroo.

He read as a hare or a kangaroo hops, barely touching the ground, carrying off crumbs of soil on its paws.

There were a great many beds arranged around the walls, all of which looked as though they had recently been slept in by perverted kangaroos...

For me, not knowing your theme until your finished is like using a scalpel to turn a kangaroo into Miss Universe – there will be a lot of deep cuts, and there’s a high chance it won’t work.

Sturt's desert pea Meaning: Have courage, take heart Swainsona formosa | Inland Australia Malukuru (Pit.) are famous for distinctive blood-red, leaf-like flowers, each with a bulbous black centre, similar to a kangaroo's eye. A striking sight in the wild: a blazing sea of red. Bird-pollinated and thrives in arid areas, but very sensitive to any root disturbance, which makes it difficult to propagate.

I want to tell him that when we were in the camps waiting for a boat we spoke about what we imagined Australia would be like. Kangaroos, koalas, wide open spaces. Then, when we arrived, we were locked up and the images we had shrank smaller and smaller until Australia became tiny patches of sky beyond the barbed wire.

My first step out of the Kum Den is like the cold slap of a bitch in heat. Reality is so beautiful when she's angry. I'd give up another chunk of thigh to fuck the fury out of her.

That twat is a few syrup pouches shy of a waffle. You shouldn't trust anything she says.

My darling, what a cat they have! Something perfectly stupendous. Siamese, in colour dark beige, or taupe, with chocolate paws and the tail the same. Moreover, his tail is comparatively short, so his croup has something of a little dog, or rather, a kangaroo, and that’s its colour, too. And that special silkiness of short fur, and some very tender white tints on its folds, and wonderful clear-blue eyes, turning transparently green towards evening, and a pensive tenderness of its walk, a sort of heavenly circumspection of movement. An amazing, sacred animal, and so quiet – it’s unclear what he is looking at with those eyes filled to the brim with sapphire water.

she believed in God in much the same way as she believed in Australia, for she had no doubt whatever as to the existence of either, and she went to church on Sunday in much the same spirit as she would look at a kangaroo in the Zoological Gardens, for kangaroos come from Australia.

I would go to Australia, at the bottom of the world," said Tristran, "and bring you. Um." He ransacked the penny dreadfuls in his head, trying to remember if any of their heroes had visited Australia. "A kangaroo," he said. "And opals," he added. He was fairly certain about the opals.

The 10's(2010) are a baby kangaroo, a bill overdue, a coal chute for staggering millions, a bowl of camphor punch, the fast-dissolving afterimages of a long night's exhausting dreams. Boys and girls, take off those space suits; the boot is lifted from your chest and you can safely resume the search for perfection.

One afternoon a bunch of us went downtown to sell our blood for $10 a pint to get some more money to keep drinking shots and beer. On the way back we saw a sign for a carnival. It said that if you could last three rounds with a kangaroo you’d win $100. That was a better deal than the blood money we had just made. So off we went to the carnival. They

He’d decided to keep a journal in the hope that this might help. He looked at the recent entries. Probably Tuesday: hot, flies. Dinner: honey ants. Attacked by honey ants. Fell into waterhole. Wednesday, with any luck: hot, flies. Dinner: either bush raisins or kangaroo droppings. Chased by hunters, don’t know why. Fell into waterhole. Thursday (could be): hot, flies. Dinner: blue-tongued lizard. Savaged by blue-tongued lizard. Chased by different hunters. Fell off cliff, bounced into tree, pissed on by small grey incontinent teddy bear, landed in a waterhole. Friday: hot, flies. Dinner: some kind of roots which tasted like sick. This saved time. Saturday: hotter than yesterday, extra flies. V. thirsty. Sunday: hot. Delirious with thirst and flies. Nothing but nothing as far as the eye can see, with bushes in it. Decided to die, collapsed, fell down sand dune into waterhole.

»Die Deutschen wollen ja rebellisch sein«, sage ich nickend. »Sie warten ja nur auf einen, der es ihnen erlaubt«.

Dr. Klaus Mampell from Germany reportedly said that he didn’t see any more reason for seeing us (the human race) connected with apes than with canary birds or kangaroos.

shelters desert bighorn sheep, pronghorn antelope, jackrabbits, pocket gophers, kangaroo rats, various lizards, and the ever-popular lesser long-nosed bat,

Ben often comes here. It's some kind of kangaroo graveyard. He likes to collect kangaroo bones. What can I say? It's just something Stink Collectors do.

I think I know now why it is called the Kangaroo Suite. It’s because even when you no longer have a child, you carry him forever. It

scenarios. But there are certainly good reasons to believe that if Homo sapiens had never gone Down Under, it would still be home to marsupial lions, diprotodons and giant kangaroos.

came out now with one eye on the kangaroo and one eye on the referee. I’m really steaming mad now, and I creamed that kangaroo. His tail hit me so hard my head ached for three days. I jumped off at the referee and decked him. The referee’s people jumped in the ring after me, and my pals jumped in after them. The cops had a hell of a time in that ring sorting things out. I

Kangaroos give birth to only one baby at a time. So as soon as one baby is born, the female gets pregnant again. Otherwise the kangaroo population would never sustain itself. This means the female kangaroo spends her entire life either pregnant or nursing babies. If she’s not pregnant, she’s nursing babies; if she’s not nursing babies, she’s pregnant. You could say she exists just to ensure the continuance of the species. The kangaroo species wouldn’t survive if there weren’t any kangaroos, and if their purpose wasn’t to go on existing, kangaroos wouldn’t be around in the first place.

According to Fleetfin's research, if you sun-dry the sexual organs of a male and female squid and bring them into contact at the rate of three hundred fifty feet per fifteen seconds or less (the average running speed of a third-year junior high school student), you'll create an explosion surpassing dynamite.

You see, another thing I didn’t know is that the kangaroo defends itself with its tail. It has an eight-foot tail that comes whipping up behind you when you knock the kangaroo down. And the harder I hit him, the harder and faster his tail came up behind me. I never saw that tail come whipping up behind me, and I never paid attention to the boxing glove on the tail. He had an eight-foot reach I didn’t know about. Actually,

I cannot say whether there is fur on my wife's legs for I have never seen them nor do I intend to commit myself to the folly of looking at them. In any event and in all politeness -nothing would be further from me than to insult a guest- I deem the point you have made as unimportant because there is surely nothing in the old world to prevent a deceitful kangaroo from shaving the fur from her legs, assuming she is a woman?

These days every morning begins like a joke you think you have heard before, but there is no one telling it whom you can stop. One day it's about a cow who walks into a bar, then about a man with a big nose on his honeymoon, then about a kangaroo who walks into a bar. Each one takes up an entire day. The sun looks like a prank Nathanael West is pulling on the world; on the drive to work cars are swinging comically from lane to lane. The houses and lawns belong in cartoons. The hours collapse into one another's arms. The stories arc over noon and descend like slow ferris wheels into the haze of evening. You wish you could stop listening and get serious. Trouble is you cannot remember the punch line which never arrives till very late at night, just as you are reaching for the bedside lamp, just before you begin laughing in the dark.

HAZEL WASN’T PROUD OF CRYING. After the tunnel collapsed, she wept and screamed like a two-year-old throwing a tantrum. She couldn’t move the debris that separated her and Leo from the others. If the earth shifted any more, the entire complex might collapse on their heads. Still, she pounded her fists against the stones and yelled curses that would’ve earned her a mouth-washing with lye soap back at St. Agnes Academy. Leo stared at her, wide-eyed and speechless. She wasn’t being fair to him. The last time the two of them had been together, she’d zapped him into her past and shown him Sammy, his great-grandfather—Hazel’s first boyfriend. She’d burdened him with emotional baggage he didn’t need, and left him so dazed they had almost gotten killed by a giant shrimp monster. Now here they were, alone again, while their friends might be dying at the hands of a monster army, and she was throwing a fit. “Sorry.” She wiped her face. “Hey, you know…” Leo shrugged. “I’ve attacked a few rocks in my day.” She swallowed with difficulty. “Frank is…he’s—” “Listen,” Leo said. “Frank Zhang has moves. He’s probably gonna turn into a kangaroo and do some marsupial jujitsu on their ugly faces.” He helped her to her feet. Despite the panic simmering inside her, she knew Leo was right. Frank and the others weren’t helpless. They would find a way to survive. The best thing she and Leo could do was carry on. She studied Leo. His hair had grown out longer and shaggier, and his face was leaner, so he looked less like an imp and more like one of those willowy elves in the fairy tales. The biggest difference was his eyes. They constantly drifted, as if Leo was trying to spot something over the horizon. “Leo, I’m sorry,” she said. He raised an eyebrow. “Okay. For what?” “For…” She gestured around her helplessly. “Everything. For thinking you were Sammy, for leading you on. I mean, I didn’t mean to, but if I did—” “Hey.” He squeezed her hand, though Hazel sensed nothing romantic in the gesture. “Machines are designed to work.” “Uh, what?” “I figure the universe is basically like a machine. I don’t know who made it, if it was the Fates, or the gods, or capital-G God, or whatever. But it chugs along the way it’s supposed to most of the time. Sure, little pieces break and stuff goes haywire once in a while, but mostly…things happen for a reason. Like you and me meeting.” “Leo Valdez,” Hazel marveled, “you’re a philosopher.” “Nah,” he said. “I’m just a mechanic. But I figure my bisabuelo Sammy knew what was what. He let you go, Hazel. My job is to tell you that it’s okay. You and Frank—you’re good together. We’re all going to get through this. I hope you guys get a chance to be happy. Besides, Zhang couldn’t tie his shoes without your help.” “That’s mean,” Hazel chided, but she felt like something was untangling inside her—a knot of tension she’d been carrying for weeks. Leo really had changed. Hazel was starting to think she’d found a good friend. “What happened to you when you were on your own?” she asked. “Who did you meet?” Leo’s eye twitched. “Long story. I’ll tell you sometime, but I’m still waiting to see how it shakes out.” “The universe is a machine,” Hazel said, “so it’ll be fine.” “Hopefully.” “As long as it’s not one of your machines,” Hazel added. “Because your machines never do what they’re supposed to.” “Yeah, ha-ha.” Leo summoned fire into his hand. “Now, which way, Miss Underground?” Hazel scanned the path in front of them. About thirty feet down, the tunnel split into four smaller arteries, each one identical, but the one on the left radiated cold. “That way,” she decided. “It feels the most dangerous.” “I’m sold,” said Leo. They began their descent.

Australia! Australians! Surely it's still full of Magwitch-types, lumbering oafs with shaven pates and broken noses on the run from whatever law there is, chucking kangaroo heads on the barbie as they read their awful bush poetry.

The Super Constellations took three days to reach London [from Australia] and lacked the power or range to dodge most storms. When monsoons or cyclones were encountered, the pilots had no choice but to put on the seat belt signs and bounce through them. Even in normal conditions they flew at a height guaranteed to produce more or less constant turbulence. (Qantas called it, without evident irony, the Kangaroo Route.) It was, by any modern measure, an ordeal.

In these parts,’ rejoined blue-bearded Iff, ‘I am having my time wasted by a Disconnector Thief who will not trust in what he can’t see. How much have you seen, eh, Thieflet? Africa, have you seen it? No? Then is it truly there? And submarines? Huh? Also hailstones, baseballs, pagodas? Goldmines? Kangaroos, Mount Fujiyama, the North Pole? And the past, did it happen? And the future, will it come? Believe in your own eyes and you’ll get into a lot of trouble, hot water, a mess.

When I was ten years old, one of my friends brought a Shaleenian kangaroo-cat to school one day. I remember the way it hopped around with quick, nervous leaps, peering at everything with its large, almost circular golden eyes. One of the girls asked if it was a boy cat or a girl cat. Our instructor didn't know; neither did the boy who had brought it; but the teacher made the mistake of asking, 'How can we find out?' Someone piped up, 'We can vote on it!' The rest of the class chimed in with instant agreement and before I could voice my objection that some things can't be voted on, the election was held. It was decided that the Shaleenian kangaroo-cat was a boy, and forthwith, it was named Davy Crockett. Three months later, Davy Crockett had kittens. So much for democracy. It seems to me that if the electoral process can be so wrong about such a simple thing, isn't it possible for it to be very, very wrong on much more complex matters? We have this sacred cow in our society that what the majority of people want is right—but is it? Our populace can't really be informed, not the majority of them—most people vote the way they have been manipulated and by the way they have responded to that manipulation—they are working out their own patterns of wishful thinking on the social environment in which they live. It is most disturbing to me to realize that though a majority may choose a specific course of action or direction for itself, through the workings of a 'representative government,' they may be as mistaken about the correctness of such a choice as my classmates were about the sex of that Shaleenian kangaroo-cat. I'm not so sure than an electoral government is necessarily the best.

Her mother was peaceful. She was calm. The sight filled Alice with the kind of green hope she found at the bottom of rock pools at low tide but never managed to cup in her hands. The more time she spent with her mother in the garden, the more deeply Alice understood- from the tilt of Agnes's wrist when she inspected a new bud, to the light that reached her eyes when she lifted her chin, and the thin rings of dirt that encircled her fingers as she coaxed new fern fronds from the soil- the truest parts of her mother bloomed among her plants. Especially when she talked to the flowers. Her eyes glazed over and she mumbled in a secret language, a word here, a phrase there as she snapped flowers off their stems and tucked into her pockets. Sorrowful remembrance, she'd say as she plucked a bindweed flower from its vine. Love, returned. The citrusy scent of lemon myrtle would fill the air as she tore it from a branch. Pleasures of memory. Her mother pocketed a scarlet palm of kangaroo paw.

The moon broke through the clouds, and Shane could just make out a figure ahead, leaning over the stream as if examining its reflection. “Drina?” he whispered. The figure turned, and Shane had to laugh, because it wasn’t his sister — wasn’t even a person. It was a kangaroo.

What I’ve written here is a message to myself. I toss it into the air like a boomerang. It slices through the dark, lays the little soul of some poor kangaroo out cold, and finally comes back to me. But the boomerang that returns is not the same one I threw. Boomerang, boomerang.

It is tempting to look upon England as a sort of musical Australia, an island culture inhabited by, and sustaining, its own insular fauna – musical kangaroos, koalas, and platypuses. That, however, would be very much to exaggerate England's musical isolation or independence. It is also a considerable exaggeration to view the English preference for thirds as something altogether alien or opposed to continental practice, as if only in remote geographical corners (and behind closed doors, among consenting adults) could harmonies unsanctioned by Pythagoras or the Musica enchiriadis be furtively enjoyed.

The Mad Gardener's Song He thought he saw an Elephant, That practised on a fife: He looked again, and found it was A letter from his wife. 'At length I realise,' he said, 'The bitterness of Life!' He thought he saw a Buffalo Upon the chimney-piece: He looked again, and found it was His Sister's Husband's Niece. 'Unless you leave this house,' he said, 'I'll send for the Police!' He thought he saw a Rattlesnake That questioned him in Greek: He looked again, and found it was The Middle of Next Week. 'The one thing I regret,' he said, 'Is that it cannot speak!' He thought he saw a Banker's Clerk Descending from the bus: He looked again, and found it was A Hippopotamus. 'If this should stay to dine,' he said, 'There won't be much for us!' He thought he saw a Kangaroo That worked a coffee-mill: He looked again, and found it was A Vegetable-Pill. 'Were I to swallow this,' he said, 'I should be very ill!' He thought he saw a Coach-and-Four That stood beside his bed: He looked again, and found it was A Bear without a Head. 'Poor thing,' he said, 'poor silly thing! It's waiting to be fed!' He thought he saw an Albatross That fluttered round the lamp: He looked again, and found it was A Penny-Postage Stamp. 'You'd best be getting home,' he said: 'The nights are very damp!' He thought he saw a Garden-Door That opened with a key: He looked again, and found it was A Double Rule of Three: 'And all its mystery,' he said, 'Is clear as day to me!' He thought he saw a Argument That proved he was the Pope: He looked again, and found it was A Bar of Mottled Soap. 'A fact so dread,' he faintly said, 'Extinguishes all hope!

Now a kangaroo has short arms, so I’m figuring I’ll knock his ass out. They put gloves on me and I start jabbing away at him, but what I didn’t know is that a kangaroo has a loose jaw so when you hit them it doesn’t go to their brain and knock them out. I’m only jabbing at him, because who wants to hurt a kangaroo? But when I couldn’t’ get anywhere with him with my jab I let loose with an overhand right, a real haymaker. Down the kangaroo goes and I feel this hard whack on the back of my head where my old man used to whack me. I shake it off and go back to jabbing the kangaroo who’s hopping all over the place, and I’m trying to figure out who the S.O.B. was who clipped me from behind. You

Never let it be said I’m not an equal opportunity insubordinate: I ignore my own advice just as often as I ignore anyone else’s.

Always, during both the low points and high points in our lives, if we needed to escape, we went bush. We were so lucky to share a passion for wildlife experiences. Tasmania, the beautiful island state off the southern coast of Australia, became one of our favorite wildlife hot spots. We so loved Tassie’s unique wildlife and spectacular wilderness areas that we resolved to establish a conservation property there. Wes and Steve scouted the whole island (in between checking out the top secret Tasmanian surf spots), looking for just the right land for us to purchse. Part of our motivation was that we did not want to see the Tasmanian devil go the way of the thylacine, the extinct Tasmanian tiger. A bizarre-looking animal, it was shaped like a large log, with a tail and a pouch like a kangaroo. It had been pushed off of the Australian mainland (probably by the dingo) thousands of years ago, but it was still surviving in Tasmania into the 1930s. There exists some heartbreaking black-and-white film footage of the only remaining known Tassie tiger in 1936, as the last of the thylacines paces its enclosure. Watching the film is enough to make you rededicate your life to saving wildlife.

If the need arose, she knew, she would never hesitate to apply her sophisticated techniques in actual combat. 'If there's anyone crazy enough to attack me, I'm going to show him the end of the world - close up. I'm going to let him sing the kingdom come with his own eyes. I'm going to send him straight to the Southern Hemisphere and let the ashes of death rain all over him and the kangaroos and the wallabies.

Why, if evolution were a free for all, restrained only by selection for fitness, why did Australia not produce some of the bug-eyed monsters of science fiction? The only moderately unorthodox creation of that isolated island in a hundred million years are the kangaroos and wallabies; the rest of its fauna consists of rather poor replicas of more efficient placental types-vatiations on a limited number of archetypal themes.

Until as late as the early 1950s a round-trip aeroplane ticket from Australia to England cost as much as a three-bedroom suburban home in Melbourne or Sydney. With the introduction by Qantas of larger Lockheed Super Constellation airliners in 1954, prices began to fall, but even by the end of the decade travelling to Europe by air still cost as much as a new car. Nor was it a terribly speedy or comfortable service. The Super Constellations took three days to reach London and lacked the power or range to dodge most storms. When monsoons or cyclones were encountered, the pilots had no choice but to put on the seat-belt signs and bounce through them. Even in normal conditions they flew at a height guaranteed to produce more or less constant turbulence. (Qantas called it, without evident irony, the Kangaroo Route.) It was, by any modern measure, an ordeal.

The Bible thinks it is perfectly all right to destroy all animals as punishment for the crimes of Homo sapiens, as if the existence of giraffes, pelicans and ladybirds has lost all purpose if humans misbehave. The Bible could not imagine a scenario in which God repents having created Homo sapiens, wipes this sinful ape off the face of the earth, and then spends eternity enjoying the antics of ostriches, kangaroos and panda bears.

I think I know now why it is called the Kangaroo Suite. It’s because even when you no longer have a child, you carry him forever. It’s the same when a parent is ripped away from the child, but the suite is the size of the world. At Mama’s funeral, I put a handful of cold dirt from her grave in the pocket of my good wool coat. Some days I wear that coat inside the house, just because. I sift through the soil, hold it tight in my fist. I

For hundreds of years, there have been stories of heroic Lassie-type dogs (and at least one kangaroo) running to fetch help when their owners are in trouble. To fetch help, Lassie needs to understand that she needs to inform other people of the emergency because only she saw it. This may not come as a surprise, but based on the first generation of experiments, it is unlikely your dog, no matter how much of a dog genius they are, has the cognitive abilities to do this.

From the point of view of an inhabitant of the Old World, marsupials are exceedingly odd. But oddity is not the same as randomness. Kangaroos and wallabies may lack verisimilitude; but their improbability repeats itself and obeys recognizable laws. The same is true of the psychological creatures inhabiting the remoter regions of our minds. The experiences encountered under the influence of mescalin or deep hypnosis are certainly strange; but they are strange with a certain regularity, strange according to a pattern.

The male imperative to compete for females often comes at a heavy cost. In some mammals, such as kangaroos, mountain sheep, deer and sea elephants, it leads to fights that can result in life-threatening injuries. At a minimum, the loser can expect a drop in status as well as eviction from the most favorable feeding grounds, leading to a shortened life expectancy. Moreover, sexual selection often operates at cross-purposes with other evolutionary forces.[152] A male who develops disproportionately sized organs, or displays brilliant color, or emits certain sounds, may well lose some of his mobility or become more vulnerable to predators. Trying to attract a female, in other words, may cost him his life.

You people don’t know how to enjoy anything anymore!” it yells. “Instead, you’re just constantly striving for surplus pleasure. You want to be able to enjoy more than you could enjoy at the moment, and in doing so, you don’t enjoy anything at all anymore. ‘That’s our nature,’ you say. But interestingly enough that is completely analogous to the economic pursuit of surplus value, which makes the use value completely irrelevant and this raises the question of whether this wild goose chase for surplus pleasure really arises from human nature, or whether it was instead triggered by the adoption of traditional economic – and therefore, of course, social – paradigms for our ideas of enjoyment and of individual happiness? And if this is really the case, isn’t it about time to break through this?

The first human footprint on a sandy Australian beach was immediately washed away by the waves. Yet when the invaders advanced inland, they left behind a different footprint, one that would never be expunged. As they pushed on, they encountered a strange universe of unknown creatures that included a 200-kilogram, two-metre kangaroo, and a marsupial lion, as massive as a modern tiger, that was the continent’s largest predator. Koalas far too big to be cuddly and cute rustled in the trees and flightless birds twice the size of ostriches sprinted on the plains. Dragon-like lizards and snakes five metres long slithered through the undergrowth. The giant diprotodon, a two-and-a-half-ton wombat, roamed the forests. Except for the birds and reptiles, all these animals were marsupials – like kangaroos, they gave birth to tiny, helpless, fetus-like young which they then nurtured with milk in abdominal pouches. Marsupial mammals were almost unknown in Africa and Asia, but in Australia they reigned supreme. Within a few thousand years, virtually all of these giants vanished. Of the twenty-four Australian animal species weighing fifty kilograms or more, twenty-three became extinct.2 A large number of smaller species also disappeared. Food chains throughout the entire Australian ecosystem were broken and rearranged. It was the most important transformation of the Australian ecosystem for millions of years. Was it all the fault of Homo sapiens? Guilty

Are his letters to Diana downstairs?" She sighed. "What is it about girls and letters? My husband left me messages in soap on the bathroom mirror. Utterly impermanent.Really wonderful-" She broke off and scowled. I would have thought she looked a little embarrassed, but I didn't think embarrassment was in her repertoire. "Anyway. Most of the correspondence between the Willings is in private collections. He had their letters with him in Paris when he died. In a noble but ultimately misguided act, his attorney sent them to his neice. Who put them all in a ghastly book that she illustrated. Her son sold them to finance the publication of six even more ghastly books of poetry. I trust there is a circle of hell for terrible poets who desecrate art." "I've seen the poetry books in the library," I told her. "The ones with Edward's paintings on the covers. I couldn't bring myself to read them." "Smart girl. I suppose worse things have been done, but not many.Of course, there was that god-awful children's television show that made one of his landscapes move.They put kangaroos in it. Kangaroos. In eastern Pennsylvania." "I've seen that,too," I admitted. I'd hated it. "Hated it.Not quite as much as the still life where Tastykakes replaced one orange with a cupcake, or the portrait of Diana dressed in a Playtex sports bra, but close." "Oh,God. I try to forget about the bra." Dr. Rothaus shuddered. "Well, I suppose they do far worse to the really famous painters.Poor van Gogh. All those hearing-aid ads." "Yeah." We shared a moment of quiet respect for van Gogh's ear.

While there was still water in the middle of the pools, animals attempted to reach it through the silt but would get bogged. We spent day after day checking dams, finding about eight to ten animals hopelessly mired in the silt at each and every dam, primarily kangaroos and wallabies. We had to get to the dams early in the morning. Some of the kangaroos had been struggling all night. Steve engineered planks and straps to rescue the animals. The silt would suck us down just as fast, so we had to be careful going out to rescue the roos. Because of the lactic acid buildup in their tissues (a product of their all-night exertions to free themselves), some of the kangaroos were too far gone and couldn’t recover. But we saved quite a few. At one point, Bob came out to lend a hand. I was at the homestead, and the ovulation strip turned bright blue. I hustled over to the creek bed where Steve and his dad were working. I motioned to Steve. “The strip is blue,” I said. He looked around nervously. “I’m out here working with me dad,” he said. “What do you want me to do?” “Just come on,” I whispered impatiently. “But my dad’s right here!” I smiled and took his hand. We headed up the dry creek bed and spent some quality time with the biting ants and the prickles. It was after this trip to our conservation property in the Brigalow Belt that I discovered I was pregnant. I tried to let Steve know by sitting down at the table and tucking into a bowl of ice cream and pickles. “What are you doing?” asked a totally confused Steve. I explained, and we were both totally overjoyed, keeping our fingers crossed for a boy to go along with our darling daughter.