I can’t believe I sat on this picture for four days, but I was putting the finishing touches on the new novel (which is now DONE and being road-tested by a select group of readers while I hold my breath for feedback).
Now, I turn my full attention to the kangaroo I saw at the Brentwood Street Fair last weekend.
Now, first of all, let us really qualify the words “Brentwood” and “Street Fair.” When you think of a traditional street fair, maybe those words conjure up images like street food (which they did have, although it was definitely more high-end than your traditional hot dogs/ hamburgers), music (yes, they had that too, though it was a REALLY good jazz quartet), and kids’ activities (yep, also had these—FOUR bouncy-houses, face painting, pottery, etc). I guess what I’m getting at is that Brentwood isn’t going to do anything that’s low-end, so it should really have been no surprise to me that the petting zoo they set up at the corner of Bundy and San Vicente (in the grassy divider in between the streets) was so very….fancy.
And by this, of course, I mean high-end, that it didn’t even stink, and that there were two clean-looking llamas, a bunch of cute little pygmy goats, and one of those exotic cows with the hump on his back (sorry—I don’t know anything about different cow breeds, and I’m just not motivated enough to Google it to find out what kind it was). Oh, and also, they had this kangaroo, who was just hanging out
in a cage with his huge legs splayed out. I like the way he's propped up on his tiny little front legs, like he's having you over for dinner and is pleasantly making conversation with you. "So....what subjects are you taking in school? Yeah? That sounds interesting....."
Even though it’s a more, shall we say, upscale type of petting zoo, it’s still a petting zoo, which means those animals are not exactly in their natural habitats. Personally, I have nothing against zoos, because I always figure those animals were either born in captivity (meaning they’d have absolutely no shot in the wild), or were slow enough to get caught, so they’d be someone’s dinner anyway, so now they have a nice life, albeit a life in a cage. So, usually I just hope that animals like this have a pretty decent life, get fed and petted regularly, and don’t have to worry about getting sent to the glue factory, because they are actually making children smile.
I’m on the fence about this kangaroo, though. I mean, they didn’t have nearly enough space to let him out, and kangaroos are NOT friendly, so there was no way he was going to be out and interacting with the kids. So, I kind of get the look on his face, like “This totally sucks.” He looks a little like he’s plotting something, like “oh man, I can’t WAIT until they come to give me my kangaroo kibble. That’s when my nefarious plot to take over Brentwood will begin. Yes. Yes!”
Here’s the thing you can’t see, though—this kangaroo is in a pen with an OPEN TOP. Um, doesn’t he know that kangaroos move around by JUMPING? Doesn’t he know that he can, at any time, just break out and go hopping down San Vicente to freedom?
Apparently he doesn’t, which I guess means this kangaroo is stupid, which then answers for us the conundrum of why he’s the kangaroo in the petting zoo that little children can pay $3 to stare at, but that no one can touch. He’s a special kangaroo, you see. And by special, I am meaning “can’t figure out how to jump out of a cage with an open top). So there you go.
Incidentally, we were at the Formosa on Monday night after the staged reading of Steph’s play (which went great!), and I told this story to someone, who then replied that they had a kangaroo story of their own (because who doesn’t?). Apparently he worked in publicity for Warner Brothers when that movie Kangaroo Jack came out, and as part of the PR for the movie’s launch they closed down Hollywood Blvd and tried to have a kangaroo race. However, as we’ve already established, kangaroos are neither intelligent nor motivated, so after all the prep, all the hassle getting street permits and paying people to bring kangaroos and let them loose in the streets of Los Angeles, the kangaroos just kind of stood there, going “What? I’m a f*&king kangaroo, okay? You don’t tell me what to do.”
