A dead kangaroo mysteriously appeared in a Kincaid Street yard behind a high fence. Photo: Chris Roe.
It was around dusk on Thursday when an elderly Wagga resident headed out the back door of her Kincaid Street home to find a nasty surprise by the bins.
“I was just coming out to put a bit of stuff in the garbage,” she explained.
“And then I did a double-take when I saw this body lying there! I had no idea. How could it get here?”
A small grey kangaroo lay dead against the brick wall of her garage between her red and green bins, the wheel of one bin pressed up against its neck.
Her daughter, a vet, took a look at the dead marsupial and offered a professional opinion.
“We knew it was dead, it had rigor mortis,” she said.
“But as to when it died, it must have been within the 24 hours before that.
“It was pretty fresh, there were no flies and it looked very intact.”
While she did not go so far as to conduct an autopsy, the vet did check the pouch of the small female and fortunately did not find a joey.
It is not uncommon to see dead kangaroos outside the city limits, or even the occasional live one hopping across a Wagga street on the periphery, but it is certainly odd to find one in a yard in the middle of town.
In six months, Wagga Council collected 18 cats and 12 dogs from the city streets but no dead roos.
How high can a roo hop? Photo: Chris Roe.
Adding to the mystery, the secure backyard is surrounded by a dog-proof 1.6-metre iron fence on three sides and a 1.8m brick wall on the street side.
The large steel gate had not been opened for weeks, with a narrow side gate being the only other entrance.
“Squeezing through is not really a possibility,” the resident said.
“I don’t imagine it could have jumped over from there as it couldn’t really get a run-up. So it’s a mystery.”
Kangaroos have been known to jump higher than 1.8m, but it is rare and the roo in question was small.
The location next to the bins is curious too, almost as if it had been added to the rubbish pile.
A skip-bin, perhaps?*
Did someone dump it there? If so, why? A prank? A mistake?
The resident called Wagga City Council, which told her that it could not remove the animal from a private property, although if it had been found on a median strip …
The 80-year-old woman decided that bundling a body out onto the street on a wet night under cover of darkness was not for her and instead the poor little roo was taken to its final resting place at Gregadoo on Saturday.
Its death is likely to remain a mystery.
(*Dad joke supplied by Adam Drummond)
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