Forget snakes and spiders, kangaroos are our deadliest animal. Don’t believe me? Well then, let me paint a picture for you.
You’ve been in and out of lockdown and decide to go on a socially distanced walk alone on a hiking trail by an ocean cliff for some peace and quiet.
Listening to the calming ocean sounds, you begin to see a large moving grey entity further ahead of you. You’re not quite sure if it’s real or merely a lockdown-induced hallucination, but as it starts to get closer and grow larger, you realise what exactly is heading your way: a stampede of kangaroos. Or, as they are actually called, a troop. Just let that sink in for a minute.
That’s what happened to 27-year-old Victorian Em (@_emken) this week in a video that has held me and my rent-free head hostage. In the clip, Em is casually walking on a grassy hiking trail before she notices a mob of what looks like up to 20 kangaroos bouncing towards her like Jaws.
“Just in case I die here, there’s a stampede of kangaroos coming for me,” she said as the troop of kangaroos came jumping towards her direction.
“If I get kangaroo kicked to the face, what the fuck.”
Em then tries to hide in some grass off the path as the roos get closer, and she starts to rightfully scream: “oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god… holy shit, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.”
Fortunately, the Kangaroo Jacks and Jills scattered like ants and jumped over the fence but JFC, I’m still sweating from the whole ordeal and I wasn’t even there.
@_emken An actual representation of living in Australia. #aussie #straya #kangaroo
The way my heart rate was bouncing after watching this. I kan-not even begin to imagine how terrifying this would have been to experience.
Speaking in the comments, Em explained that she moved off the walking track in hopes they would just go past her but said it was “hard not to panic.”
According to a report on animal-related deaths by the National Coronial Information Statistics, 18 people had died after an interaction with a kangaroo between 2000-2010. 16 of them were related to a motor vehicle accident, but 2 deaths were reported as “unknown”. Call me a kanga-conspiracist but something tells me these 20 roos were behind those two unknowns.
Anyway, can you really blame me for not freaking the fuck out when there are videos of a kangaroo fighting a koala or beating the shit out of a drone??? I can’t help watch this and think this gal survived by the skin of her tail.
As one comment on the TikTok put it best: “Kangaroos do not look real, they look like humans in kangaroo suits and that’s the scariest part.”
