Three members of an Australian family used a broom and a shovel to fight off an attack by a large kangaroo that left all of them injured, one seriously.
Linda Smith, 64, sustained a collapsed lung, broken ribs, cuts and other internal injuries, and underwent surgery in hospital yesterday after the Saturday evening attack at her property in the Darling Downs region of Queensland State.
The wildlife carer and her husband, Jim, had been feeding 30 kangaroos and wallabies at their property every night amid a severe drought that has depleted their food sources.
One of the large males — at least 1.8m tall — turned on her husband as he fed it, she told Queensland Ambulance Service.
“Jim was on the ground and the kangaroo just kept at him. I went outside to try and help him and took a broom and a piece of bread, but he knocked the broom out of my hand then attacked me,” Smith said.
The 64-year-old got the animal off her husband and grabbed a piece of wood to defend herself, while her 40-year-old son “came out to try and help me and hit him over the head with a shovel.”
The kangaroo then hopped back into the bush, Queensland Ambulance Service’s senior operations supervisor Stephen Jones said, adding that the attack was “rare.”
“They are known to attack and can be quite vicious, particularly the large males, but it is something that is uncommon, something that I haven’t come across in my 30-odd years in the service,” Jones told reporters.
He added that if Smith had not intervened to help her husband, who sustained multiple cuts and abrasions to his arms, chest and legs, he could have received more serious injuries and “the outcome may have even been death.”
Smith, who said she has been a wildlife carer for 15 years, added that she did not want the marsupial to be hunted down and killed.
Calling what happened “an act of nature,” Smith said she was always aware she was dealing with wildlife.
“I am always careful, especially of the males. It’s breeding time so they can be more aggressive. I don’t want this kangaroo to be hunted down and killed, I love animals,” she said.
“I do understand what happened, but I have never seen one that aggressive — it was in there for a fight and it wouldn’t back off,” she said.
There are more than 46 million kangaroos across Australia, according to an Australian government count last year.
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
ESPIONAGE: The British government’s decision on the proposed embassy hinges on the security of underground data cables, a former diplomat has said A US intervention over China’s proposed new embassy in London has thrown a potential resolution “up in the air,” campaigners have said, amid concerns over the site’s proximity to a sensitive hub of critical communication cables. The furor over a new “super-embassy” on the edge of London’s financial district was reignited last week when the White House said it was “deeply concerned” over potential Chinese access to “the sensitive communications of one of our closest allies.” The Dutch parliament has also raised concerns about Beijing’s ideal location of Royal Mint Court, on the edge of the City of London, which has so
OVERHAUL: The move would likely mark the end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operated in nearly 50 languages The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda. US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a
RSS