Monday, February 15, 2010

My inspitations

The inspiration for my Molly Gumnut stories often comes from the wonderful wildlife visiting our garden.

Last year, we planted three jacaranda trees and four crepe myrtles. We love sitting outside and admiring the blue bell blossoms of the jacarandas and the beautiful colours of the crepe myrtles.

One morning, I awoke to a loud barking, coughing sound. When I peered out the bedroom window, I was delighted to see a mob of kangaroos. Two large males were bouncing around the garden, punching and kicking each other, while the other ones stood and watched.

Grinning, I grabbed my digital camera and rushed outside. My smile soon vanished when I found those naughty animals had snapped off a branch of one of the crepe myrtles and, to make matters worse, they had eaten some of the flowers. They had also broken off a large branch of one of our jacaranda trees.

The kangaroos ignored my presence and carried on chasing each other around the lawn, pulling at different bushes.

Oh, well, I thought. I may as well film them and get a few pictures with my camera. There's a Molly story there for sure.

See the video and pictures below:

This is the video of the boxing kangaroos outside our bedroom window. Just click on the link to play the video. If you watch it to the end, you'll see the large kangaroo, standing on his tiptoes in an aggressive manner.:




Here is one of the naughty kangaroos.


Another rascal.


Here is our white-flowering crepe myrtle after the kangaroo attack:


We placed a wire fence around this beautiful crepe myrtle to kepp the rascals away.


Here is the branch that was broken off our white crepe myrtle by the boxing kangaroos: