Congratulations Overly Energetic Kangaroo!

Across the outback you’ll be hopping – hip hop – hip hop – galoomphing paw after galoomphing paw upon the earth carving out tiny pockets of dry soil with each surge forward.  The rush of wind upon your face – the glorious moments of half-flight as you leave the earth – the perfect shock as you slam into the ground.  With each leap you’ll wish that you could stay in the air forever in that instant of anticipation before the ground strikes your paws but then the shock wouldn’t be there and that would be a god damn tragedy.

The rhythm will hum in your bones and muscles as you tromp by strides across the outback.  It’ll just be a series of perfectly ordinary moments of movement, glorious in their simplicity and holy in their ephemerality.  They’ll be moderate and mild and so well spaced and paced that the rhythm and hum will overtake you until you see her: flank delicately curving towards tale, pouch hanging just a little, still tight, snout buried in a watering hole.  The moment you see her your whole brain will shut down and you’ll just stop.  Thump your foot.  And hop in a new direction.   Towards her.

You’ll arrive in a stumbling mass of dust, swirling cloud inches from her, sprinkling her with dust and tiny stones.  She’ll shudder up and shake the dust and rocks off her coat and fix you with a look like what the fuck are you doing?

You’ll give her a look like exactly what you want and she won’t know what to make of that because most female kangaroos don’t hit on other female kangaroos that blatantly.  She’ll thump her foot defensively and look back at the watering hole.  You’ll know that if you want to get any pouch action today, you’re going to have to step it up, so you’ll thump your tail on the ground and start hop hop hopping all around the watering hole in broad, rapid circles.   You’ll pick up speed, making shorter hops than before, more intense, more jarring, more violent as if to say look what I can do.

You’ll accumulate velocity until your momentum becomes so tremendous that you cannot alter direction: you can only struggle to slow, to stop yourself sliding in dust, generating a rut in the earth until your shoulder slams into her shoulder and you become one glorious whole for a moment tumbling away from the water, one on top of the other.  When it ends the two of you will both be baffled, but you’ll be on top.  You’ll draw yourself up on your haunches and let your tail drag so that it catches on hers.  You’ll sit there, straddling her, eyes locked with hers, covered in dust for what feels like an eternity until your tongue flits out to clear the dust off your snout.

Then you’ll wait, staring at her, to see what she’ll do next.

Congratulations Overly Energetic Kangaroo!