Wild Kangaroos Give Me a Boxing Show

This is a video I took in 2006, on my first trip to Australia. (This is a repost, rewritten, from January.)

I hadn't been in the country long when, one very early morning, probably 5:30 a.m. or so, I was walking in the capital city of Canberra, not far from the city proper (though you wouldn't think that seeing the video). Suddenly, there they were: The first two wild kangaroos I had ever seen. They were hanging out in front of a high school. I immediately became transmogrified into the worst videographer in history, which will you see in a second.

After what would likely be considered "cardiac event," I managed to remember how my lungs, eyes, legs, arms, hands, and fingers worked, and started videoing. The kangaroos are immediately seen disappearing behind a small clump of trees. Great. While mimicking the camera work in The Blair Witch Project, I make my way around the trees.

Then something truly remarkable happens: As my camera peers around the end of the tree clump, the two kangaroos are standing there, looking at me. They're looking straight at me, like they were waiting for me. As Christine says, "You can almost hear one of them sigh, and say to the other, 'Well, come on Meryl, let's give the doofus tourist a show.'" And HOLY CRAP THEY DO. They rear up on their tippy-toes, lean back on their tails, and go to town, kicking, punching, heads flapping around like punching bags. And when the camera inexplicably starts videoing the sky at one point—I may have been losing consciousness from the excitement—the kangaroos actually stop and look (at the 39-second mark), seemingly waiting to make sure I'm not screwing up.