Watch and Listen

Okay, just take a minute with this one. If you have headphones, even better. Turn up the sound and watch Maxie taking in all of the bird calls while carefully looking around at his environment. I was laying on the grass next to him, enjoying a warm, but cool late autumn morning when I filmed this. The Currawong birds had just arrived for the winter, they make such a pretty sound. That chatter is the Willy Wagtail, they flitter about in the morning sun catching bugs. Maxie studied everything, he was quite a bold little joey.

Those ears! Watch how they rotate independently of each other for surround sound. Kangaroos have amazing hearing, though they are terrible at pinpointing where the sound is coming from.

And those lips. It’s only occasionally that a kangaroos is born with pink lips. I always knew that this special feature meant that I would be able to spot Maxie no matter where he was in the mob when he got bigger (and I was right!), but more on that later.

Max was curious about EVERYTHING! He really did watch the butterflies, birds, bees and bugs. And yes, much to my dismay one day I saw him eat a slug!

When you are new to looking after orphaned joeys, it’s a bit daunting taking them out for walks. They are to be wild, so as much as we want to keep them safe, they need to do the things that they would do with their kangaroo mother. I’d watch the wild kangaroo mums and bubs every day, picking up pointers, but that didn’t make it any easier when this tiny little guy would take off down paths of grasses taller than he was and disappear. He was showing off for Indie no doubt as this vide was taken just a couple weeks after she came to live with us. But Maxie was always ready for an adventure! Luckily they are like little boomerangs at this age, they hop as fast as they can, and then race right back to mum.

Indie didn’t like the tall grasses, she was quite prim. But she was happy to join Max in the fun where the grass was short. Look at the two of them racing each other on this foggy autumn morning. Little boomerangs, always coming back to me “did you see? did you see?”. They do this with their mums in the wild too, they zoom around as if saying “watch me!” and then always return to mum and her pouch.

Here’s Maxie Roo at all of 9 months old weighing only 3.2kg showing off his mad jumping skills in the long grass, slowed down just for you!