FRANKIE DeGROOT | Local News | Contact
If the two and a half hour trip from Betoota Grove to Betoota Heights proves anything, it’s that the look-both-ways-before-you-cross message simply isn’t reaching the local wildlife.
And the unfortunate result of this is that the only time the kids get to see a roo is upside down, with its legs pointing at the circling flies.
Luckily, local Dad Bronsen Garamond has a simple solution to protect his young children from the embarrassing reality that most of the local fauna is too stupid to connect blinding halogen beams and the roar of an internal combustion engine with impending doom.
“It’s easy really”, explained Garamond as he hosed some fur from the undercarriage of the family car, a well-worn 80 Series Landcruiser.
“I just tell them the animals are sleeping. In fact, just last night a possum had a bit of a snooze after it rushed out into the road to try to check the lower control arm bushes. Remember that Lachy? The sleepy possum on the way home last night?”.
But son Lachlan, 6, isn’t so sure.
“Why are all the animals so lazy? The wombat near the servo has been sleeping there for 3 days now, and even the crows haven’t been able to wake him up.”
Luckily dad is well-prepared for tricky questions like this.
“Well, sometimes native animals are very sleepy, and they want to sleep on a nice flat piece of ground like a hard shoulder or a median strip. And then they are so tired that they sleep for … you know, a long time. And they … hey, let’s have a rainbow paddle pop.”
