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Thursday, December 06, 2012

One day, in the Australian Outback...

Last summer I took a guided tour through the Australian outback. On the 4th day during our lunch brake I saw a kangaroo. Being intrigued I tried to get a bit closer to it. It finished eating and began to hop away. I looked back at the truck and began to follow it.

I followed it a ways. I realized how far from the truck I was and began to worry a bit, but this experience was far too cool to pass up, a real kangaroo standing right there. I wouldn't miss this for the world. I decided to get a bit closer to it.

I started creeping towards it, ever so slowly. It didn't notice me. Soon I was but 10 feet from it. Still feeling a bit uncomfortable about leaving the truck way back, I just let go. I was going to live wildly. In for a penny, in for a pound I figured and got closer. 5 feet. 3 feet. 2 feet. I reached out to touch it. Feel its fur. It turned its head. It saw me. We stared into each others eyes. It was a stare down. It turned towards me with its whole body. I saw in it's pouch a joey. This was about when I realized I'd made a big fucking mistake. It reared up onto its tail and extended its legs. I heard a cracking sound and saw stars. Then everything went black.

When I woke up the kangaroo was gone. I had a throbbing headache. I tried sitting up. My sides seared up in pain. I now know that my rib cage had been fractured in 3 places.

I yelled out, causing my ribs to flare up in pain again. No response. I yelled out two more times, but not once did I hear a reply. My sides hurt too much to yell again. I decided the best action to take at this point was to crawl back to the truck, following my footprints. After a while I came to some thick bushes where I lost my footprints. I decided to crawl in the direction I'd remembered the truck being. I never found it. After a few hours, deciding I wasn't going to find the truck, I began looking for a road or town. After a few hours I still hadn't found anything. I was thirsty. Really thirsty. I was sweating to the point that the ground where my hands and knees were was dark brown with sweat.

I never found anything that day. At nightfall I was hungry, thirsty and tired. I couldn't keep going. I lay down in a ditch and fell asleep.

I woke up to the sunrise is my eyes reflecting off a bit of shiny rock. My head was hurting even worse now. My thought was incredibly dry, my tongue swollen. I was dizzy and my heart was beating fast and irregularly. The only thing to do was continue crawling. The going was hard. I was fainting periodically only to be woken up by the sensation of falling or hitting my jaw on a rock.

A few hours later, knees and chin bloody and stinging, I found a road. A sudden burst of hope, but I wasn't there yet. I crawled along the road for probably another hour, I'm not sure, after a while time stopped having meaning to me. I though I saw something in the distance, a town maybe?

I crawled towards it. It took a long long time. By the time I got to the town the sun was setting. There was a sign. In the day's last light I read off it: "Mercy; pop: 27" A small town, maybe the end of my journey. Mercy, yes, truly the world showed mercy at last. I crawled into the town. The closest building was a tea house. In my delirious state I didn't even bother questioning what a small town like mercy had a tea house for.

I crawled in and hoisted myself with great effort up onto a bar stool. I looked at the man who ran it and croaked "Water."

The man looked at me and said "I'm sorry, sir, but we only serve tea here."

"Then get me tea."

"What kind"

"I don't care, just get my some."

The man left a few minutes and came back with a kettle and a saucer. He poured a bit of tea into the cup. Beaming at me he said "Koala tea. It's our town of Mercy's specialty."

I looked at it. There was still koala fur floating in the top of it. I tried to drink it. The fur wadded up in my throat, gagging me. I retched. I looked at the man. I'm sorry sir, Mercy's tea is great, but I can't drink it with all this fur in it. Could you get me a sieve to filter it out?"

The man looked at me sternly and said. "I'm sorry; The Koala tea of Mercy is not strained."
*Thanks, Gary

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