Australian police were forced to pepper-spray a giant kangaroo after it bounded into an elderly woman’s garden as she was hanging out the washing and attacked her.
The 94-year-old said she thought she was going to die as the red roo, which can grow up to two metres (6ft 7in) tall and jump more than nine metres (30 feet) in one leap, knocked her to the ground and kicked her several times.
“I thought it was going to kill me,” Phyllis Johnson told the Courier-Mail newspaper from her hospital bed following the attack in the outback Queensland town of Charleville on Sunday.
“It was taller than me and it just ploughed through the clothes on the washing line straight for me.
“I happened to have a broom nearby and I just started swinging at it. I bashed it on the head but it kept going for me. Not even the dog would help, it was too frightened.”
Bruised and bleeding, she managed to crawl to her flat and alert her son, who called the police.
The kangaroo is a marsupial from the family Macropodidae. It is a very popular native animal of Australia that it has become its national symbol. Its emblem is used on the Australian coat of arms, on some of its currency, as well as by some of Australia's best known organisations, such as Qantas.
Sergeant Stephen Perkins told the newspaper the animal lunged at two officers when they arrived and they had to use pepper spray to subdue it.
“One officer had to deploy his spray on the animal and it ran away and saw the other police officer out of the corner of its eye,” he said.
“The other officer also had to deploy his spray to keep from getting hurt. It’s one of the many unusual calls we get out here.”
Despite her ordeal, Johnson said she had a soft spot for kangaroos, which are found across Australia.
“I used to feed them next door, give them some bread, and they’ve always been so gentle,” she said.
“They weren’t as big as that one though and they’ve never gone for me like that. This one seemed to target me, it was putting its feet into me and kicking.”
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