They bounce across the roof of Parliament House. They collide with cars. They come in through the bedroom window. Canberra, Australia's capital, has a problem – too many kangaroos. Authorities have tried giving them vasectomies and oral contraceptives, to no avail. They say trucking them to new and distant pastures is too expensive. Now they're proposing a cull. But many people are aghast at the idea of their best-known marsupial being shot en masse in the national capital. A government survey has found that more than 80 percent of Canberra residents think the wild kangaroos should stay. On the other hand, in a different survey, 17 percent of drivers in the district reported having collided with a kangaroo at least once. Canberra's latest man-vs.-roo horror story concerns a confused beast, standing about 5 feet 9 inches on its powerful hind legs, which last month bounded through a closed bedroom window onto a bed where a couple huddled with their 9-year-old daughter, then hopped into their 10-year-old son's bedroom. The animal was wrestled out of the house by the father, Beat Ettlin, and headed for the hills, leaving claw marks on a bed and a trail of blood from broken glass. In fact, culls are nothing new. Barry Stuart, who runs a kangaroo abattoir 220 miles north of here, shoots more than 25 on most nights with a license from the government. “You don't like to destroy them, but when the time comes, you've got to do it.” But a cull in the capital is likely to be a different matter. Last year, during the killing of about 400 kangaroos that had eaten themselves close to starvation on fenced military land in Canberra, the protests were so heated that the killers, using stun gun and lethal injections, had to work behind screens. This time the opposition will be no less vigorous, warns Pat O'Brien, president of the Wildlife Protection Association of Australia. The meat, once widely considered only good enough for pet food, now reaches European restaurants as steaks, and the hides make premium leather. The public has until May 11 to make its views known.
