Kangaroo at Serpentine Dam picnic

Photos taken yesterday at Serpentine Dam just outside of Perth by intrepid photographer and poet, Glen Phillips. I hasten to add, we don't often have kangaroos this docile that they will come and eat out of your hand. The ones in the wild are precisely that: wild, and dangerous at times. This is Glen's wife Rita generously feeding the little creature.

Here's the first stanza of a poem by Glen, written before, as the sub title tells you:

KANGAROOS AT SERPENTINE FALLS
(during the struggle for independence in East Timor)

They came down from the hills
tentatively at first,
ears twitching noble noses
raised to the wind
as if deciding that the offence
of our human odours—
the richness of benzines
from cooling car exhausts,
charred chops on the barbecues,
whiffs of aftershave or underarm—
was one worthy
to be endured these two centuries
of ethnic wild-life cleansing.