CHAPTER IV
THE ANIMALS AND BIRDS
The kangaroo—The koala—The bulldog ant—Some quaint and delightful birds—The kookaburra—Cunning crows and cockatoo.
Australia has most curious animals, birds, and flowers. This is due to the fact that it is such an old, old place, and has been cut off so long from the rest of the world. The types of animals that lived in Europe long before Rome was built, before the days, indeed, of the Egyptian civilization, animals of which we find traces in the fossils of very remote periods—those are the types living in Australia to-day. They belong to the same epoch as the mammoth and the great flying lizards and other creatures of whom you may learn something in museums. Indeed, Australia, as regards its fauna, may be considered as a museum, with the animals of old times alive instead of in skeleton form.
The kangaroo is always taken as a type of Australian animal life. When an Australian cricket team succeeds in vanquishing in a Test Match an English one (which happens now and again), the comic papers may be always expected to print a picture of a lion looking sad and sorry, and a kangaroo proudly elate. The kangaroo, like practically all Australian animals, is a marsupial, carrying its young about in a pouch after their birth until they reach maturity. The kangaroo’s forelegs are very small; its hindlegs and its tail are immensely powerful, and these it uses for progression, rushing with huge hops over the country. There are very many animals which may be grouped as kangaroos, from the tiny kangaroo rat, about the size of an English water-rat, to the huge red kangaroo, which is over six feet high and about the weight of a sucking calf. The kangaroo is harmless and inoffensive as a rule, but it can inflict a dangerous kick with its hindlegs, and when pursued by dogs or men and cornered, the “old man” kangaroo will sometimes fight for its life. Its method is to take a stand in a water-hole or with its back to a tree, standing on its hindlegs and balanced on its tail. When a dog approaches it is seized in the kangaroo’s forearms and held under water or torn to pieces. Occasionally men’s lives have been lost through approaching incautiously an old man kangaroo.
The kangaroo’s method of self-defence has been turned to amusing account by circus-proprietors. The “boxing kangaroo” was at one time quite a common feature at circuses and music-halls. A tame kangaroo would have its forefeet fitted with boxing-gloves. Then when lightly punched by its trainer, it would, quite naturally, imitate the movements of the boxer, fending off blows and hitting out with its forelegs. One boxing kangaroo I had a bout with was quite a clever pugilist. It was very difficult to hit the animal, and its return blows were hard and well directed.
The different sorts of kangaroo you may like to know. There is the kangaroo rat, very small; the “flying kangaroo,” a rare animal of the squirrel species, but marsupial, which lives in trees; the wallaby, the wallaroo, the paddy-melon (medium varieties of kangaroo); the grey and the red kangaroo, the last the biggest and finest of the species.
The kangaroo, as I have said, is not of much use for meat. Its flesh is very dark and rank, something like that of a horse. However, chopped up into a fine sausage-meat, with half its weight of fat bacon, kangaroo flesh is just eatable. The tail makes a very rich soup. The skin of the kangaroo provides a soft and pliant leather which is excellent for shoes. Kangaroo furs are also of value for rugs and overcoats.
