The Tragic Tale of Big Boomer

When you work with zoo animals for long enough, you eventually accumulate tales of loss.  Sometimes they are animals that you spend years working with until you can't imagine a day when they won't be there - and then they're gone.  And then there are the ones who come only too briefly before tragedy takes them away.  Sometimes they are gone in the less dramatic sense - sent to another facility, where maybe you can keep in touch with their new keepers and follow up with them.  And sometimes, they're just... gone.  And you never know what happened.

Such was the story of one of my earliest, more poignant losses - Boomer.

Boomer and I met at what we can charitably describe as a roadside zoo, where he was born not too long before I started there.  I'd had some bad professional luck and was desperate to get back to work, and, figuring any port was good in a storm, I took the job at a sketchy little place I'd never heard of before.  It was relatively nearby, which was good because I couldn't afford to move again, so I figure I'd stick it out.

Boomer did not have a particularly original name for a red kangaroo ("Boomer" being a term for a male of that species).  I should be embarrassed about that, seeing as I'm the one who named him, but I was barely out of school, he was my first kangaroo, and I was in love with him.  Being a kangaroo, he started life off as something about the size and shape of a jellybean, gradually recognizable by the expansion of his mom's pouch.  His young life took a turn for the worse when one of the senior keepers decided that she wanted a baby kangaroo to raise as an educational ambassador, and the joey was taken from the pouch.  About five seconds later, I heard that keeper exclaim with disgust.  For some reason, she hadn't counted on the possibility of the joey that she pulled being a male.

Big Boomer back before he got especially big

It's worth noting that male red kangaroos can be about twice the size of the females, or about as large as an adult man - and a fair bit stronger.  They can be very single-minded animals, not easily intimidated or cowed, and an aggressive (or, in its view) defensive, red kangaroo is a pretty frightening animal.  Hunters have had their dogs killed by them before in Australia.  Come to think of it, hunters themselves have been killed by them.

I didn't really think about it in those terms.  I just saw that we had a little joey that was pulled from the pouch and couldn't be put back in.  And so I raised him.  All of us did, I mean, but I feel like I was the most parental towards him.  The senior keeper liked taking him home sometimes to shock the neighbors, or once or twice even to a bar.  Still, she lost interest before too many months had passed, and the novelty wore off.  With my limited experience, I tried raising him in that awkward in-between of being a kangaroo and a... whatever the plan was for him to be.  I'll admit, I did get a lot of pleasure out of calling his name and watching him bounce over to me, sidle up to me, and tug at my pantleg, looking up unexpectedly.  He was able to live with the other kangaroos, so he had some socialization skills, but you could tell he never quite fit in.

Boomer grew up - physically, as well as behaviorally.  I was stuck working there for longer than I liked, and I professionally grew up with him.  Soon, not many staff members felt comfortable going in with Boomer.  He was pushy and domineering, and would shove keepers up against the walls.  Some of the female keepers got... cues... from him that he wanted to be more than friends.  None of the other male red kangaroos behaved like that - we assumed it's because Boomer, raised by people, wanted to interact with us, but still didn't know how.  At any rate, he certainly wasn't afraid of people.  I tried working with him, sometimes in the enclosure, sometimes on the other side of the fence.  The zoo's owner just saw him as a liability.  And one day, he was gone.

It wasn't until I left that zoo and got back into working at accredited facilities that it dawned on me how wrong a lot of things from the place were.  The vet care.  The enclosures.  And, in this case, the lack of transparency.  I never found out what happened to Boomer.  I presume he was sold to someone else.  Were they warned about his nature, and prepared to accommodate a half-imprinted adult male red kangaroo?  Or were they in for a nasty surprise?  Did he wind up with a mob of females elsewhere that he could live alongside peaceably, and spend out his days lounging in the sun?  Or was his fate darker?

At that place, and with that owner, asking questions was a great way to not have a job anymore.

This was in the earliest days of my career, and I'm glad that I don't work there anymore.  I don't know if I would have liked the animal caretaker I'd have become if I stayed there much longer.  But I do have a lot of memories of that place.  Some of them are happy, to be sure, but there are plenty that are bitter, or sad.  The memories of Boomer definitely fall into the later category.  I really wish that everything had gone differently for him.  Long after he was gone (and while it wasn't directly related, I didn't stay for that much longer after he left), I found myself thinking of him hopping over to see me with a hopeful look in his eyes.  I hope that his life got better after he left our gates.