Monkeyrockworld

I didn’t know it was coming, and I realize it had just when the big 4×4 jeep steered to the left side of the road, leaving a little black trail on the concrete, just vaguely perceptible in the early dawn.Our car stopped behind it, and when the door opened Adrian and Matt came down leaping from its massive shape onto the ground. They were grinning and congratulating each other while coming towards us. “We made it, we killed the roo!”
It didn’t take me long to realize there was roadkill in front of me: a small but compact little pool of blood spawned from the dead kangaroo’s mouth, kind of like a black flower, shaded of red. It wasn’t moving anymore, of course. The bullbar was definitely too big and heavy for such a small creature. It wasn’t a wallaby , but neither a big kangaroo, it might have weighed around 30 kilos. I saw many of them dead at the side of the road before, but I never saw one so close. It didn’t give me any strange feeling, it looked like a weird dog with a very odd shape lying dead on the ground. I took a picture because I always wanted to have one of a dead kangaroo, the flash made the blood so red it was impressive. But I didn’t expect what was coming.

Adrian is a French guy I traveled with during my odissey from Cairns to Darwin, and one of the two French guys that literally saved our collective ass. He’s also a great chef, and it didn’t take me long to realize he had a strange light in his eyes, and a very concitated expression on the face. “Now we cook it and eat it” was all he could say in his improving Frenglish. I thought he was joking and headed back for the car, when I actually realized he already had a bag in his hands, and was looking around seeking for help and appreciation for what he was doing. We all looked puzzled, probably not for the fact they deliberately committed the roadkill, but because we didn’t think he was serious. I’d eaten kangaroo before, but I didn’t pass through the effort of producing a steak from a compact, dead, still warm thing. But thinking was useless, because the gentleman already had pulled the carcass from the tail, lifting it to make it easier to slide its head into the bag. Matt, our English friend and the other killer, looked extremely excited about this, and also very cold and firm in the decision of having wild kangaroo meat for dinner.

And off we went again, with a casualty in the trunk, all wrapped up in a big white plastic bag. When after half an hour we pulled over in a rest area trying to find a secluded spot where to prepare our meal, I felt like something was happening inside of a bad movie. But the feeling was also pretty exciting, I must say. Please tell me how many of you people who’ve been to Australia can recall such an experience. I’m sure not many. So here we are talking in a circle in the dim light provided by a beautiful night sky full of stars and an half moon piercing us with its soul-less sight, like a living dead eye. The thing inside of the bag was stiffening, and touching it I felt like patting the back of a dog with very short, compact fur. I could feel it getting stiff from behind the plastic screen. Adrian grabbed a couple bowls where we used to do dishes, a big knife, scissors and a few more things, while Matt looked more excited every coming minute. He decided with the precision of a mad surgeon that we should have dragged the animal in the bush inbetween the campsite’s limit and the highway, and skin it there away from other people’s attention. I was drawn out of the lot as some sort of “technician”: carry a torch, provide light, and take some pictures. Yes, we are definitely a bunch of sick fucks, but I guess you should have guessed it already.

TO BE CONTINUED

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