Australian capital may take up arms against a kangaroo glut

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
They bounce across the roof of Parliament House. They collide with cars. They come in through the bedroom window. Canberra, Australia's capital, has a problem - too many kangaroos. Authorities have tried giving them vasectomies and oral contraceptives, to no avail. They say trucking them to new and distant pastures is too expensive. Now they're proposing a cull. But many people are aghast at the idea of their best-known marsupial being shot en masse in the national capital. A government survey has found that more than 80 percent of Canberra residents think the wild kangaroos should stay. On the other hand, in a different survey, 17 percent of drivers in the district reported having collided with a kangaroo at least once. Canberra's latest man-vs.-roo horror story concerns a confused beast, standing about 1.75-meters on its powerful hind legs, which last month bounded through a closed bedroom window onto a bed where a couple huddled with their 9-year-old daughter, then hopped into their 10-year-old son's bedroom. The animal was wrestled out of the house by the father, Beat Ettlin, and headed for the hills, leaving claw marks on a bed and a trail of blood from broken glass.