Australia: The Kangaroo Mercy Killers
By J.P. Bernbach

Sam – the fool – has shot a kangaroo at three-hundred-plus yards with a single bullet from a .222 caliber rifle. The kangaroo is not down. He’s hit, but he’s not down. From up here on the bluff I can see him hobbling down by the riverbed, three-hundred-plus yards away. One big old kangaroo, hobbling, angry and in pain.

That’s what I see with my unaided eye. Sam is looking through the telescopic sight on the gun. He doesn’t shoot again. He’s not the first Australian I’ve seen take his time observing the pain he has inflicted on an animal.

"Jesus, man – what are you standing there for? Just shoot the poor guy. Jesus."

"It was the last bullet."

I look around for another. The metal floor of the Land Rover is strewn with bullets and shells that roll around rattling when the truck is in motion. All I can find are little .22s and a colorful assortment of 12 and 20 bore shells. No .222 bullet. There’s no way to administer a coup de grace to a two hundred pound kangaroo from three-hundred-plus yards with a .22 or a shotgun, even if we had a .22 rifle or a shotgun, which we don’t. What we have is: one .222 caliber rifle, no .222 caliber bullets, a handful of .22 caliber bullets, no .22 rifle, an assortment of shotgun shells, no shotguns. And one wounded kangaroo, lurching in the riverbed, in pain.

I grab the rifle from Sam. He is eighteen. The two English guys are nearby, walking back to the truck. They’re about eighteen too. I am the one in charge. We’re supposed to be mending a fence. Mending, not destroying.

Through the scope I see him – his face, his eyes. He is an animal, and he has a talent that humans lack: he takes things as they come. Something catastrophic has happened to him – something unexpected and irrevocable. He was at peace, alone, drinking from a river on a clear day. And now he’s staggering, in pain. He does not seem to be wondering at the justice of this. There is no “why me?” look in his eye. He was one thing: a kangaroo. Now he’s another thing: a dying kangaroo. He lurches once, then stops. He is panting. There is something heartbreakingly noble about him. Noble to me, that is. He’s just being a kangaroo.

Where is the wound? His left leg – the bullet has shattered the ankle bone. The foot dangles from a string – exposed sinew, bright white tendon, rags of red flesh.

I lower the rifle and glare hard at Sam. He giggles. Not because he thinks it’s funny, but because he thinks it’s awful. I can tell. Sam is a nice kid. Most of the time he just doesn’t think about what he’s doing. He picked up a gun and fired at a target. He hit the target. That was fun. Then he took a closer look at the target he hit – he saw blood and pain, a creature in distress. So now he giggles. In a couple of years it’ll be a shrug. A year or two after that, it’ll be a simple quick nod. That’s life. Or, rather, death.

We are going to kill this wounded animal. Put it out of its misery. This is my decision. It’ll take more than an hour to go back for bullets. By the time we return, the kangaroo will have slunk off somewhere; and we might never find him. So I say, "We’re going down there. Get in the truck".

One of the English guys says, "What do you propose to do? Whack the thing with the butt of your rifle?"

Maybe. If we can’t come up with something better. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to let that creature hobble around on a broken leg for three days until he dies of gangrene.

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