You may have detected with your keen bloggy-senses that I took a weekend holiday from CK to commemorate Elise’s return to American soil.
Well, half of it was in commemoration. The other half was spent in a ridiculous house-cleaning freakout fueled by the inexorable OCD Godzilla demon that resides in the hereditary depths of my soul.
(And, actually, about a fifth of that half was spent on the couch watching season five of Buffy and eating peanut butter out of a jar. But, I digress.)
I am still absorbing the national wealth and wonder of Australia via Elise’s stories (the best of which is about how she kidnapped a small boy to tow her kayak) (no, really), but right now I have to share the two that paint the pair of us in the most ridiculously naive light.
I’ll go first.
I’ve always assumed that kangaroos are are… you know… special. I’ve only ever seen one or two of them in my life time and, after all, they are a national emblem. So, while they might not be bald eagle special, I’ve spent my entire life assuming that they are least as special as a grizzly bear, or maybe a dolphin – something you don’t often see in your daily travels unless you live adjacent to a very specific terrain.
Plus: marsupials!
Also: adorable, in a strangely rodent sort of way.
Well, if you thought something similar in your decidedly nationalistic naivety I hate to shatter your illusions, but apparently we were dead wrong.
Not about the latter two things, mind you; no one can take those away. We’re just wrong about the relative scarcity.
Because, you see, kangaroo are common. Quite common. As common as deer are in Pennsylvania, especially in that you are most likely to encounter them grazing in your yard or narrowly averting them in the middle of a road, and they are fair (and even welcome) game for hunting and eating.
This seems like the sort of imperatively important thing I should have learned in second grade, or whenever the teacher reveals to a shocked and awed classroom that there are other countries where people don’t spend American dollars.
(Actually, I knew that all along, and as early as kindergarten and as late as fifth grade I was endlessly amused by the morons my peers who didn’t understand that Philadelphia was a city and Pennsylvania was a state, let alone the nuances of zip codes. But, here I have to digress yet again. Back to kangaroos.)
I mean… deer are just Bambi, you know? They don’t do anything special like, say, fucking hop at speeds up to 44 miles per hour, or carry their young in a built-in fanny pack. They just walk around and… well, that’s really all they do.
My point being, deer aren’t magical, imaginary, cartoon creatures that just happen to be real.
Illusions shattered. Seriously, I can never go back.
Tune in tomorrow for Elise’s way, way more flagrant display of nativity, which – unlike mine – can’t even be blamed on being an ignorant American.