PhotoFeed Contest - Wildlife Photography Round 118

Hello there gorgeous peoples, I hope that you're all well and healthy where ever you are around the world!

I just stumbled back into Hive a few days ago after too long away (though I'm always lurking...lol..) when I found out the #HiveFest 2025 will finally be in my neck of the woods (sort of...) in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia from 15th to 19th of October!

And if you don't know anything about it, please see this post here https://peakd.com/hivefest/@roelandp/save-the-date-hivefest10-15-19-oct-2025-kuala-lumpur-malaysia

And I'm soooo sooo soooooo happy to be back and doubly delighted to have stumbled upon @digi-me post here https://peakd.com/hive-153349/@digi-me/photofeed-contest-wildlife-photography-118 about the #WednesdayWildlife Photography #Photofeed #contest here https://peakd.com/hive-153349/@digi-me/photofeed-contest-wildlife-photography-118 and as my love for animals happen to be the reason I continue to breathe, I decided to pop in and say hi with my entry here of this very large, male, Eastern Gray Kangaroo I saw a few years ago on a friend's property in the bush.

Lucky I had my proper camera with a long lens because these guys- especially the older men are very territorial and this guy was way taller than my 5 ft 6 inches!

I'm not actually sure what was going on with this guy as you can see he's got his face pointing upwards and he was making these really weird noises- kind of like grunting and burping sounds- sort of. It's very hard to describe...anyway, you can see his eyes don't look good either, so I'm not sure if it's old age that ills him, or if he was actually ill.

Either way, there's no way I was getting close enough to find out!

Unfortunately Australians have a love/hate relationship with our national icon. (mostly hate...)

We hypocritically use them to lure in tourists from all over the world, to pay us money to admire them;

We use them as recognisable corporate logos for many big national companies;
Then we use them as federal income from exports to global companies who either process their meat for human and animal pet food consumption, or to manufactures to process them into leather for shoes, soccerballs and other goods.

And we also kill them by the hundreds every day- well, in the dark of night anyway, shooters are sanctioned by the government to kill them, not only to export them, but also for "sports" shooting, farmers don't hesitate to kill them and then there are the bloody bogan sociopaths who catch them and coldly and cruelly torture them before eventually killing them.

And then there's the car accidents. So many dead animals by the side of our roads.

Everyone HATES kangaroos- well not everyone thankfully, but no-one intentionally looks for kangaroos to run over with their car because no-one wins in that scenario. NO-ONE.

The cars are write offs, the drivers are usually lucky to be alive and the poor kangaroos usually hop off a few meters into the bush to die slow and painful deaths- if they can make it that far and many of them can't and can be repeatedly hit by oncoming drivers, so they either stay on the side of the road and again, die slow and painful deaths.

And then there's the joeys that are in mums pouch when she get hit/shot.
Not too many people think about them, but lucky there are a few. Those brave individuals that don't hesitate to find a safe spot to pull over then run back to check the kangaroo and then the pouch, calling the rescuers or eventually delivering the live joeys to vets or carers.

So it's not a good life for our kangaroos- whichever way they turn and hop, they're targeted and people blame them for crossing the roads, but forget that our roads cross their own songlines, their homes- the homes that they've had, the land that they've lived on for tens of thousands of years.

https://animalsaustralia.org/our-work/wildlife/south-australia-kangaroo-inquiry/

https://australiansocietyforkangaroos.com/

Anyway, I think that there's nothing better than a good story- as sad as it is, to go with stunning photos of one of the worlds most unique and caring animals, so I hope that you got something out of my entry into the 118th edition of the #photofeed #contest https://peakd.com/hive-153349/@photofeed/photofeed-contest-wildlife-photography-round-118

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Thank you so much for reading my post, I really hope that you enjoyed it and look forward to your comments and thoughts.

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And unless otherwise stated- ALL photographs, all media, material and writings, are all my originals taken by me sometime in the past few decades or so somewhere in my travels and as such, ofcourse they are subject to all international IP and copyright laws and I may have already used them for my own commercial purposes here https://www.redbubble.com/people/CHOCOLATESCORPI/shop And here https://fineartamerica.com/art/chocolatescorpi, So please ask first if you want to use any of them as we wouldn't want you getting into trouble. Thank you 😊

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ChocolateScorpi is so incredibly grateful to the traditional custodians of this beautiful land that I call home and I thank you for caring for it for so long.

I pay my respects to elders, past, present and emerging and offer our hand to all first nations hands in order to help heal all of our relationships to the earth on this truly magical and extraordinary island nation that we now all call home.

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