My Life with Kangaroos: A Deaf Woman's Remarkable Story

11. A Community of Individuals

124 11 A Community of Individuals THE forests and steppes of East, West, and South Australia are often plagued by heavy rainfall. Even the very dense foliage in some regions fails to offer sufficient protection against the torrential downpours , such as those in 1974. Kangaroos deal with bad weather in their own way: With their heads down, backs bent low and snouts almost touching the ground, they stand as still as statues. The ingenious structure of their coats protects them from physical harm, and thanks to the thick wool of their undercoats, their skin always remains dry. The pile of their coats, which is a characteristic of kangaroos, plays a particularly important role in this. It divides at about the middle of the back, at a vertebra, and runs from here to the lower part of the head. From the middle of the bent back (the peak, so to speak), the water flows down the animal’s flanks, over the arms and legs and even via the tail. Water on the upper part of the back, on the other hand, finds its way from the back of the neck to the forehead. At this point, however, the passage of the water is checked by a crest, formed by the direction of pile running toward the head, which is met by pile running in the opposite direction from the snout. The result is that, instead of running over the bridge of the nose, water now runs off 9781563685590_My Life with Kangaroos.indd 124 4/8/13 11:04 AM A Community of Individuals 125 and down the temples.23 The crest, which runs from one side of the head to the other, is called the “forehead line.” This line is highly differentiated as to position and pattern and accounts for each kangaroo having its own unmistakable identity. “Look! That’s Lulu with her two children, an adult and a little one! Over there you can see the two kangaroo mothers, Dusja and New Girl, with their offspring and a grandchild. Next to them, Valja!” Mrs. Schwallbach enthusiastically pointed out several of the members of her large kangaroo family. Looking at all these kangaroos, I felt a bit daunted. How could one possibly get to know each of them with such ease? Of course, at the zoo in Basel I had been able to identify “my” kangaroos among all the others, but there were only about ten in all; here, the kangaroos she affectionately referred to as the “Schwallbach Mob” were about three times that number! And, indeed, it took me a long time to identify each one, and because there were so many, I had to find a new way of recognizing them, so I began using the folds on their foreheads as a distinguishing feature. This method worked, and after considerable hard work, they gradually became familiar. Not only was I able distinguish each animal at first glance but, using the same technique, I also came to recognize the members of other kangaroo colonies to some extent. Once, as I set off with my mother to search for the Schwallbach Mob, which had to all intents and purposes vanished from the scene, we came across the Bat Mob. (These were names I created for identification purposes while carrying out my studies.) Seeing them, my mother immediately assumed that we had discovered the missing animals, only to be corrected by my telling her that none of these animals belonged to the Schwallbach group. She opened her mouth 23. This remarkable fact concerning the different directions of the pile, which serves as an efficient “surplus water drainage system,” provides evidence in support of the argument that climatic conditions have remained constant for a considerable time and that the kangaroo has managed to adapt to them. 9781563685590_My Life with Kangaroos.indd 125 4/8/13 11:04 AM 126 MY LIFE WITH KANGAROOS wide and looked at me, knowing nothing as yet of my forehead-code trick of quickly identifying them. Once Mrs. Schwallbach came up to me, lifted the hair above my forehead, looked at me intently, and said, “Aha, so that’s Doris!” Those were happy days at Pebbly Beach! Along with the forehead code there were of course other recognition methods based on kangaroo physiognomy. Dusja, for example, had a very broad nose; New Girl had harelike, plush cheeks and deep-set eyes. Matilda’s eyes, on the...