For those of you who believe that the relationship between manliness and kangaroos has been under examined, this column is for you.  Our story starts when my buddy Rob and I got ourselves hired on the grounds crew at the Oklahoma City Zoo in 1974.  At the time, rumor had it we finagled ourselves into that job because I’d seen a map that claimed to show where a fugitive English midget hid a fortune in gold and jewels before he got overtaken and strung up.  I’m not saying it’s true and I’m not saying it’s false.  I’m just saying that’s a subject for another column.

Anyway, our job classification when we hired on was “Animal Tech One.”  Now if you’re familiar with the Oklahoma City Zoo, you know there’s a splendid variety of animal life out there--vertebrates and invertebrates alike.  And the lowest form of life on the premises is “Animal Tech One.”  Anybody could give us orders, including the Southeast Asian Mango Snail, and we’d have to follow ’em.  I think there were three of us on the payroll at the time.  Me, Rob and another guy we’ll call Sweet.  We all worked on the grounds crew.

Sometimes, our duties called for us to work in the kangaroo pen.  Now, I’m going to tell you some things about kangaroos you may not know.  First, they’re curious about work.  We’d go into their enclosure to plant trees, mend fence, clean up--stuff like that.  If the chore kept us in one spot for awhile, some of the kangaroos would hop over to where we were, lean on their tails, and study our technique.  Next, kangaroos don’t like you to pet ‘em.  When they’re sitting so close to you and being such good students, it’s hard to resist the urge to reach up and scratch ‘em behind the ear.  If you try, they give you an irritated look and hop off to study the work methods of somebody who’s not so “touchy-feely.”

Here’s another thing.  Kangaroos can spot an animal hater a mile away.  And animal tech one Sweet was an animal hater.  Rob and I enjoyed kangaroo company and they seemed to like our yarns about quick draw cowboys and buried treasure.  I think they liked my singing too.  Didn’t like Rob’s though.  But Sweet hated roos and they hated him back.  Whenever Sweet would walk into their enclosure, one of ‘em would always manage to sneak up behind him, pull his work gloves out of his pocket and drop them in the dirt.  If it got warm and we hung our jackets on a tree branch, the “roos” would find Sweet’s, pull it off the tree, and drop it and step on it.  To get even, if Sweet thought no one was looking, he’d chunk a piece of gravel at whichever roo he thought he could hit.

Now here’s something else.  The biggest kangaroo on earth is the “Big Red.”  They can get over six feet tall and weigh 200 pounds or more.  We had the Wilt Chamberlain of big reds--in fact, we called him Wilt.  One day Sweet was mending fence and Wilt decided to study his technique.  Sweet looked up and saw Wilt leaning on his tail--watching.  It made Sweet nervous and he made some threat about feeding Wilt to the gators as gators were supposed to be real fond of roo meat.  Wilt just kept observing.  Sweet got more and more agitated and mumbled something about hauling Wilt over to the bear cage. Wilt just kept leaning back on his big tail.  Finally, Sweet broke.  He stood up and raised his hammer--sort of a threatening gesture.  He started to say something colorful and that’s when Wilt used his knobby little roo fist to nail Sweet smack in his right eye.  Evidently Wilt was a lefty.  Sweet went rolling backward in the dust and when he stopped, he sat there a minute with both hands over his ruby-red grapefruit looking eye.  Rob and I had to quit laughing long enough to tackle Sweet who was chasing Wilt around the pen intent on committing roo murder with his hammer.  I don’t think there was any danger of Sweet catching up, but we didn’t want him running around looking more ridiculous than he already did. I had the distinct feeling the roos were cracking up in their own weird kangaroo way.

So here’s the manliness moral in all this.  You shouldn’t ever threaten anybody--man nor beast.  But if you must, you ought to be ready for the sock in the eye that’s apt to follow. 

I’m Hink and I’ll see ya.

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