Rural reader LAWRIE NOCK has some advice about living with kangaroos.

My condolences to letter writer Rebecca Marks (“Dread of finding kangaroo injured and left to die”, CN April 3). 

If you are going to drive on roads within about 50 kilometres of the ACT, I suggest that you get used to the experience. 

For many years I carried a single-shot pea rifler in my farm vehicles. The main purpose was to be able to put down distressed native or other animals when I came across them. Someone made it illegal to do this, so I stopped. 

For those who have not had the experience of encountering animal injuries and think that motor vehicles are a major problem – wake up to reality. You only see the ones next to the road. 

When my daughter was jumped on by a kangaroo as she rode her bike on a public road, she ended up in intensive care and eventually wearing titanium.

The kangaroo was one of the locals well known to us, which is part of the reason she was travelling very slowly, when it jumped on her, from the top of a cutting.

Driving along a dirt road quite slowly one evening, I was attacked from the side by two kangaroos. One bounced off the fuel tank of my truck, the other managed to get itself under the rear wheels. 

When I went to look for injured animals, the one I found, which was still alive, had both legs shattered and quite possibly internal injuries.

At least 20 kilometres from any settlement and without mobile phone service or any weapon, I ended up doing the duty with a large wrench. It is a very unpleasant thing to do, but it beats waiting for the animal to die from its injuries.

The public concern about firearms and rules about shooting kangaroos at the time, also meant that when I detected an injured kangaroo on my property I was obliged to call Wires.

A shooter eventually arrived and proceeded to go through the routine of unlocking his weapon and the bolt for it, then arming it. By that time, the kangaroo with infected wounds to its leg, had moved off into a wooded area, never to be seen again. I guess it just died at some stage from its injuries.

The number of kangaroos in this region is probably not sustainable, which may be why so many of them end up on public roads. 

In the mid-1970s I saw no kangaroos on my property. I now have hundreds of them, which might be my own fault for putting in better dams for my livestock. 

I would be very pleased if the community, which claims to own these animals, would pay me agistment for their occupation of my property, at a sufficient level to cover the cost of the damage they do to my infrastructure. 

I would probably be willing to remove all introduced livestock if there was a decent return. I would even hand feed them during droughts, but won’t be able to prevent them from leaving my property to find public roads they can terrorise.

Grumpy is an occasional column written by readers. Get grumpy at editor@citynews.com.au

Dread of finding kangaroo injured and left to die