Kangaroos and your vehicle

I ran into a bloody Kangaroo last night. It was awful. I was about 15 minutes out of my home town in Central-West New South Wales, and the bugger hopped right out in front of me. Every single moment was horrific, sad and expensive.

The second I saw it standing on the other side of the road to which I was driving, I just knew I was going to hit it. I naturally put my foot on the break as I watched it bound across the road. I could see immediately that there was absolutely no way in the world that this Kangaroo was getting out of this alive. The timing of my vehicle and its leaps were just too impeccable.

As I neared it, I probably only managed to drop about 50-60km off my original speed before making a little squeak to accompany my cringe and then THUD. The poor kangaroo went flying forward and I was left with a devastating view of an injured kangaroo through the chunks of kangaroo fur floating in the headlights.

I think I said "Ohhhh nooooo," and my heart was racing a million miles an hour. Being with Julz was great because he is sweet and supportive, but with him having lived in a country that doesn't have kangaroo warning signs on the road, for most of his life, I didn't feel he was really in a position of knowledge on next steps. I was on the phone to my dad within seconds and asking him what I had to do with this poor animal who was obviously in horrendous pain (I will not go into the graphic details because it isn't nice).
Dad suggested ways to put it out of its misery but I'm afraid by the time we built up enough courage to take action, the kangaroo had perished, and so had its baby (insert sad face).

I of course balled my eyes out after my adrenalin rush subsided - it was a bit much for 6pm on a Sunday night.
A nice country boy with a very serious face and temperament stopped his truck in front of ours, which was still ticking away with it's hazard lights on, and he pulled the kangaroo off the road for us (and anyone else who may have got a surprise speed bump), checked that the baby wasn't breathing and bid us good day.

Now that the drama of a wounded kangaroo on the road was finished (but not forgotten) I realised I could potentially have another serious problem at hand. What about the vehicle I was driving?
I was driving my mum's partner, Mark's, bright yellow ute (apparently utes are very Australian, so for those of you who do not know of the ute, it is a utility work vehicle which tends to have a tray on the back for transporting large objects) and this ute is a city ute and is not equipped with a 'roo bar' - a strong metal bar attached to the front of the vehicle to redirect damage in situations such as my current one.
I looked at the ute and it appeared to be missing its front grill, but fortunately the radiator which lives behind said grill was still in tact and the car didn't seem to be overheating. My brother kindly advised me over the limited telephone reception, that it should be fine as long as it wasn't a particularly busy night for bugs who would be inclined to bake on the radiator.

To cut a long story short so that I can move back on to the subject of menacing road kangaroos, I have to pay $500 in excess for the yellow utility vehicle to be fixed by an insurance company (insert mad face).

So what is the story behind our national emblem being such a deadly nuisance on the road? 

The kangaroo and its smaller kin, the wallaby are notorious for hopping onto the road and not only endangering their own lives but also the lives of those behind the wheel.

These bouncing bundles of problem account for 60% of fatalities and 40% of injuries in accidents involving animals in my friendly home state of NSW. (http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/2948/kangaroos-are-menace-aussie-drivers)

The problem is that drivers will often swerve their car to avoid hitting the animal and then find themselves wrapped around something much bigger and badder, like a tree, instead. It is common law among those who know the dos and don'ts in generating road kill, that you DO NOT swerve to miss said victim. You have a much better chance of getting out unharmed by hitting the animal front on. Luckily for me, I am not naturally inclined to swerve. My natural inclination is to hit the breaks and make "ohh nooo" facial expressions. I think I can just feel the dangers of a swerve at such speeds.

According to the article referenced above, a study found that kangaroo hitting is most likely to occur between dusk and dawn, when kangaroos are out looking for a graze and they tend to be more frequent in the colder months and on weekends. So I am pleased and not pleased to say that I ticked off all the boxes required for a likely kangaroo crash. I'm not really sure about the weekend statistic though - why would they be busier on weekends? They don't have any sense of 'day of week'. They don't go out shopping for their groceries on a Sunday night or bounce over to their mate's place to watch True Blood.

I believe the main reason kangaroos get all up in your grill (literally) is because they become blinded by the headlights of a vehicle, freak out and hop back in direction that they came from. It really is a frequent problem on Australian roads and people from the country just aren't big advocated of the kangaroo for this reason. Many country folk will fit their vehicles with 'Roo Bars', also known as 'Bull bars' just to avoid the $500 excess fee I've been punched in the face with.

After living in the country and trawling those roads for over 23 years, your would have thought that I would have known to drive a little slower at dusk. But noooooo.

I ended up leaving the scene feeling very wounded inside, a little bit shaky and a little worried about failing to locate the piece of grill that fell off the front of the car.

Seems to me like some of us were luckier...

Just going to touch on a topic which has been popping up in different parts of my life recently. It’s based around the curious fact of why Europeans and other societies advanced so quickly into the civilised world and left some countries and cultures behind.

One theory, which makes absolutely 100% sense to me, is the geographical luck of Europeans. Because although every modern human on every part of the globe started as hunters and gatherers - always on the move, following the migration of animals and good weather - only some of us were more fortunate in having good agriculture and livestock to start rapid farming.

When the earth’s climate changed so many thousand years ago, the human food supply started to become scarce. With our evolutionary luck of growing the brains to think to collect seeds from crops and plant them, we became farmers.

This of course didn’t only happen in parts of Europe, South America and Asia, farming was happening in less advanced societies like Papua New Guinea. Unfortunately, due to the geographic location of Papua New Guinea, these guys didn’t have access to the protein enriched wheat, barley or rice crops. Crops which can be planted with a simple throw of seeds over the earth and grow efficiently, quickly and in abundance. No, Papua New Guinean’s main crops were bananas or taros (a root vegetable which is cultivated individually by hand).

Papua New Guinea cultivating taro plant

As for animals –

“Of all the animal species in the world, only 14 have ever been domesticated. 12 of these are native to Eurasia. One, the llama, is native to South America – and the farmers of New Guinea managed to domesticate the pig. But pigs can't pull plows, and until the arrival of Europeans in the 20th century, all New Guinean farming was still done by hand.” – Guns, Germs & Steel

So in no way is it about the intelligence of the more advanced over the less advanced societies. In fact, the less advanced of us are far more resourceful than the western world and can survive in situations people from the Western world would perish at the thought of.

These more advanced civilisations were simply lucky enough to have the plants and animals which were easy to farm and reproduce to feed the masses. Groups of people and villages were able to expand and grow, living together and working together to continue to flourish, build and invent. Breeding animals to eat their meat and drink their milk, domesticating them so that they could be ridden or pull plows.

Tree house in Papua New Guinea. The people of Papua New Guinea build their houses up to 100 feet above the ground!

Places like Papua New Guinea had no such animals. They weren’t able to live in big groups and build progressive buildings with natural materials. They managed to domesticate the pig, but those fattys are no good for anything except delicious crispy bacon and roast pork.

Funnily enough, I was inspired to write this blog yesterday in the Monday morning WIP meeting at work when a colleague was asked to choose an inspiring picture to present and talk to (someone gets randomly selected each week).

She posted a picture of a bunch of Olympians, both old and new and spoke about the stereotypes of different countries and their sports. Eg. Australians and swimming, Africans and running, China and gymnastics etc.

She pointed out that it can be incredibly racist sometimes. Like the comment that was made that Africans are good at running because they run to school. When one of our Nigerian world champions pointed out that he grew up next to his school and simply jumped the fence each day. If anything, you’d guess he was good at high jump.

Perhaps Australians are supposed to be good swimmers because of our lovely weather which allows us to be outdoors more and encourages us to hit the water.

Oh boy Australians are lucky – we have a beautiful country with great weather. Our animals are native and our beaches are sandy. OK, well not all our animals are native. Did you know that our rabbit problem started with some muppet bringing 12 rabbits into the country to shoot in his backyard for sport? There was absolutely no farming, eating or agricultural reasoning, it was simply because he was bored and could entertain himself with death and blood. We did try to wipe them out once by releasing the myxomatosis virus on their furry little butts, we managed to kill 95% of them or something. But alas, there were a few who were immune to the disease and survived, and we all know that bunnies don’t take long to bump. Pop, pop, pop, pop – out come a bunch of myxomatosis resilient bunnies to take over the land again.

Reference: http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/show/episode1.html