JOEY
by
Martha (Martee) Thomas
He was found running scared and alone in the Australian bushland at an age when he should still
be in his mother's pouch. He was given to a young married couple who lived in Perth. Childless,
Sally and Fred poured all their love and attention into this small kangaroo they named Joey.
They tied knots in the legs of a pair of Fred's old bib overalls and hung them on a door knob. A
heating pad, covered with a baby blanket, was the floor for this snug little cave which became
Joey's pouch. He was safe there, and quite content. A bottle filled with special milk was kept
hanging inside the pouch and Joey flourished.
As he grew, he spent less time in the pouch. He had a room of his own, filled with toys and good
things to eat. His parents spent a lot of time with him, touching and talking to him. Joey would
lie contentedly in their laps and watch television.
Fred and Sally put a collar on him and with a long leash, took him on walks around the
neighborhood. Soon everyone was accustomed to the sight of Joey hopping along, stopping to
take a bite of their lawn.
At first he would jump trembling into Fred's arms if a barking dog approached. But as he grew
bigger, he grew bolder, and learned that a quick box with his paws to the dog's nose would back
him off.
Sadly, when Joey was half-way between two and three years old, it became obvious that his room
was no longer big enough for him. While they had a large back yard, no fence could be high
enough to keep Joey from jumping out into the street.
So they took Joey to my sister and her husband. Joan and Jack lived in the bushland, a four-hour
drive outside of Perth. Their property bordered a national park on one side and the Indian Ocean
on the other. There were lots of wild kangaroos about. There were tame ones also, like Joey,
who had been raised as pets and now needed to be returned to the wild. They had been given to
Joan for that purpose and she very much enjoyed working with them.
It was a painful separation. Sally cried; Joey cried. Fred got a speck of something in his eyes
which made them water. Joan was accustomed to witnessing the pain of separation from a pet
roo, but it still raised compassion in her. She assured Sally and Fred that Joey would be very
happy there. "He'll have a lot more space, and soon, he'll be free entirely. He'll mingle with the
wild roos which come onto our property every morning and evening for supplemental feeding
from the pans of grain which Jack puts out. Eventually," she explained
to the anxious couple, "Joey will want to spend more time with the
these roos in the wild, feeding from the wild oats and pussy-tail
grasses which cover the land. Gradually he'll merge with the wild roos
and his return to nature will be complete." Joan worked with Joey. She kept him in
an outdoor compound, with a netting stretched across the top to keep
him in. It was nearly as large as a football field, and filled with smoke
bush and wattle plants, Black Boys and reed grass. These bushes and
trees offered hiding places for Joey to run to if he got frightened. Joan
suggested gently that Sally and Fred stay away, that if they visited
Joey, it would just confuse him and keep him in mourning.
Joey gradually got accustomed to the sounds and smells and feel of the
bushland. Sometimes the wild roos would visit him at night, sticking their noses through the wire
fencing, but Joey mostly ignored them, not realizing he was a kangaroo himself. Joan spent a lot
of time with him at first, then slowly weaned herself away from him.
Joey, however, wasn't about to blend. He staunchly defended the pan he was feeding from and wouldn't permit any other kangaroo to share it with him. The pans were large enough so that four or five roos could feed from one at the same time. At the approach of another roo, Joey would stand up straight on his big hind legs, and his
body would become rigid with anger. A fierce light would come from his eyes as he raised his
small forepaw and boxed the offending kangaroo in the face. And always it seemed, the others
would retreat to another feeding pan, even if they were larger and stronger than Joey. They
seemed puzzled by his unfriendly behavior.
There were several large fresh-water ponds scattered about the property. Large black swans
floated serenely on the water, ignoring the roos as they stopped to drink. A pair of rapacious
cormorants flew in from the ocean every morning to feed on the fish in the ponds. Jack would
shake his fist at them as they swooped down and threaten to get his shotgun, but he never did. :-)
It was about this period in Joey's life that I met him.
Joan and Jack had written to me asking if I had enough vacation time saved at work to visit them.
Overjoyed, I eagerly sent off a wire, accepting their invitation, and two weeks later a prepaid,
round-trip airline ticket appeared in my mail box.
I arrived in Western Australia in their spring of January 1990, and spent six weeks visiting Joan
and Jack in their luxurious mansion. Their large home was perched along a high cliff, looking out
over the Indian Ocean. Both levels of the house had a wall of glass, so the ocean and
surrounding wild country was always visible. Fascinated, I would sit for hours and watch huge
flocks of brightly colored parrots surge in huge waves from tree to tree. Groups of kangaroos
would work their way up the hillside. Cattle and horses roamed across the property, the horses
breaking into swift runs from the sheer joy of their life. Birds were everywhere - Willy Wagtails
and Kestrels - and flocks of magpies, their song so melodious it touched my heart in a very special
way.
By the time we got dressed and down to the kitchen to eat our breakfast, there would be twenty to twenty-five roos gathered around the feeding pans which Jack had set out earlier. The roos fed not more than twenty feet
from where we were sitting in the kitchen. A large picture window allowed us to observe the
roos as we ate. We would watch as Joey would eat his fill, then lay down in front of the feeding
pan, guarding the remaining feed, not allowing any of the other roos to approach.
Many of the roos had names, certainly all the ones who had been pets did. Joan had named many of the wild ones as well. My favorite was Split Ear, a huge boomer, well over six feet tall, heavily muscled like a wrestler.
When this awesome creature was around, we did not go into the yard. All other roos gave way to
him, including Joey. Even Split Ear would dash off at the approach of a barking dog though, but
not Joey. He would lie calmly in the sun and ignore the dog.
Then early one morning, as we sat down to breakfast, we saw Joey limp slowly in from the
bushlands. His ear had been badly bitten and split in two, exactly like the huge boomer, Split Ear.
There were numerous bleeding cuts on his body and thick tail. He was very tired, very thirsty,
very upset. We went out to him at once. It had been a while since Joey had tried to get into the
house, but he made a valiant attempt that morning, and Jack had to gently shoo him away as he
slowly shut the door.
From that time on, Joey would come in early for his feedings. When the other roos started
arriving, he would lay quietly off to the side, his back to the feeding pans and other roos, ignoring
them entirely. Joan was worried. It was a serious situation. If Joey was to survive, he had to join
in with the group and learn to get along with them.
Joey remained gentle and friendly with humans. I would walk out onto the portico and almost
always he would approach me. Kangaroos learn to identify individual humans by smelling their
breath, Joan told me, but Joey did far more. Stretching his face up to mine, he would run his little
muzzle all over my face, sniffing and lightly touching. He would gently, so gently, nuzzle my
closed eye in what Joan called an "eye kiss".
One afternoon Joan noticed that Billy, one of her newly released roos, laid down near Joey in such
a way that they could look at each other. Billy was the same age and size as Joey, but he had
more readily fitted in with the wild kangaroos and did not have Joey's aggressive or isolationist
behavior. Joey was at once uncomfortable at Billy's presence, even at a six-foot distance, and he
got up and moved off. Joan sighed as she told me about it. "There's nothing I can do to help
him," she told me. Joey was on his own, like it or not.
To our surprise, Billy again laid down near Joey following the feeding the next afternoon. Billy
appeared to be looking directly into Joey's eyes. It seemed he was making a deliberate attempt to
communicate. But Joey wasn't buying it. After a few minutes he got up and again moved off
where he could be by himself. On the third day, as Joan anxiously watched, Billy again laid down
near Joey, and this time, Joey didn't move away. He did shift his position so that his back was to
Billy, but that seemed an improvement over getting up and moving away.
Over the next few weeks, Joan and I watched with pleasure as a friendship slowly developed
between the two young roos. They even played together, standing up tall and boxing at each
other with their small forearms. They'd drop down to rest, then up again they'd go. Joan swore
she could almost see smiles on their faces.
The big test was whether Joey would share his feeding pan with Billy, and eventually he did, and
with others as well. The change-over was complete. Joey now seemed to realize he was a
kangaroo and accepted the other roos as his family, although he still approached for the touch of a
human hand from time to time. He and Billy continued to come to Joan's feeding grounds, but
they would return to the bushlands with the wild roos and no longer hung around the house all
day.
Joey was finally home. ~~~Joey isn't a boy. Not a dog either. Joey is a kangaroo. He's just learning that fact. He thought all along he was a boy.
She released him when the time was right and for the first time in his memory, Joey was free. He followed Joan to the house and was angry and upset when she wouldn't let him in. To him a house still meant home, not the wild bushland. He mostly hung out around the mansion, although he would occasionally follow the wild roos into the bushland after they fed. Joey's return to the wild depended on his blending with these native roos.
Joan and Jack and I would sit, at dawn, on the top
deck which ran around their large house. As we drank our tea, still dressed in pajamas and robes, we
would look over the hillsides and bushy grounds and watch the wild roos coming in, sometimes
alone, sometimes in small family groups. It was my favorite time of day.
As Joan predicted, Joey gradually began spending more and more time away from the house. We had no way of knowing, of
course, what was going on with him out there. We assumed, and hoped, that he was learning to fit in with the other roos.
The juvenile roos, Joey's age, had a peculiar habit. As they fed, a long, rod-like appendage would emerge from
between their hind legs. This was their penis, Joan explained to me. The roos would gently bump their penises
against their stomachs in a steady rhythmic manner as they ate. It was akin to mild masturbation, I suppose, and no doubt added to the pleasure of their meal.
