Australian gets death penalty for pummeling 80-year-old man in Ohio

A male kangaroo at an exotic animal farm in Ohio stomped on some wandering geezer, and is now going to be put down.

I’ve always been somewhat skeptical about the wisdom of these kinds of settings, where humans meander among wild things. In this instance, it was apparently mating season, and I would have thought that a heightened sense of caution would be indicated. Glad to hear that the man is in fair condition, but I’m sad about the kangaroo. Australians, whose country seems to be infested with the things, may have a different opinion. Not entirely unrelated is H.L. Mencken’s short essay on zoos. Mencken felt that zoos were a waste of money, although he definitely came down in favor of the genuinely scientific observation of animals: “something valuable is to be got out of a mere study of their habits, instincts and ways of mind -- knowledge that, by analogy, may illuminate the parallel doings of the genus homo, and so enable us to comprehend the primitive mental processes of Congressmen, morons and the rev. clergy.” As usual, I disagree with some of Mencken’s conclusions, but he’s worth reading, if for no other reason, because of his unique style and comic wordplay.

In other things Australian (more so, possibly, than the above story, since the kangaroo may well be a second or third generation American), that wild man of the web, TimT, contemplates lovely Canowindra, and Steve at the Pub discusses an interesting rivalry among the uniformed classes (Don’t miss the comments; the post includes some, er, expert testimony by "Dave from Tacoma").