Sydney: A 13-year-old girl suffered a vicious 25-minute attack by two kangaroos while out jogging in the bush in Australia.
Jade Bassett was left bleeding with deep scratches down her legs as well as injuries to her face and arm after confronting the two eastern grey kangaroos in bushland in Oakhampton in the Hunter region of New South Wales.
Her grandfather, Kevin Henderson, had taken her to the track and sat down on a bench to wait for her to return from a 15-minute run.
Bassett had only jogged about 10 metres when she spotted kangaroos, two of which she said were “really big” and one slightly smaller, though still bigger than her.
As she ran towards them they did not move, which Bassett said she found strange, but did not give it much thought as she ran around them.
As she ran past one bounded up beside her and she moved to let it reach the scrub.
“I thought it was weird but I kept running. You usually don’t see them beside you, they usually move away,” she said.
“I kept going and then I heard a really loud, grunting, hissing, sound. It scared the absolute nutter out of me.”
Bassett saw the kangaroo get up on its hind legs and thought to herself “I can’t outrun a kangaroo”, so she ran into the dense scrub next to the path, thinking it would not follow her.
“Then it hit me, I don’t know if it was with its arms, its legs or its tail. I was just on the ground,” she said. “I looked up and thought ‘oh my god, it’s just so big’.”
Bassett said the kangaroo then attacked her with its front paws, scratching her and trying to bite her while baring its teeth and snarling.
“I’ve never heard a noise like it,” she said. “I can’t sleep, every time I close my eyes I hear it in my mind. I hate it.”
Bassett said she tried to push the kangaroo’s face away from her but the movement exposed her face and stomach to the animal as it attacked her, so she lay down and tried to kick as high as she could.
Bassett did not want to scream for her grandfather as she was worried what would happen if it attacked the 71-year-old.
“I copped a lot in the back of thighs, its claws kept sinking into me but I couldn’t feel it at the time,” she said.
“It took me a full day to get up the guts and look at my legs because they felt so wrong. I could put my finger in the grooves where its claws dug into me.”
Bassett picked up a branch and tried to crawl away from the kangaroo back to the track but it followed her and kept pulling her hair, scratching her and kicking her. Bassett then felt something thump her on the back.
She said she looked up and saw a second kangaroo had joined the attack and its face was just inches from her own.”It was the scariest thing I have ever seen,” she said. “I thought, ‘it’s going to eat my face’.”
“By now I was just screaming I was in so much pain. One was grabbing the back of my hair and pulling me back while the other was pulling me forward. I thought ‘I can’t handle this’ and just started screaming for my pop.”
Bassett said she kept blacking out as the kangaroos continued kicking, clawing and hitting her. Her grandfather ran yelling down the road with a big stick, which scared the kangaroos away.
Bassett got up and ran back down to the track where Henderson was and they were helped by two strangers.
Henderson said he wanted signs put up in the area.
Bassett said she wanted to warn other people that kangaroos might be more aggressive than usual in the area as she did not want it to happen to anyone else.
“I keep going over in my head what did I do to deserve it? Did I get too close?” she said. “I don’t want the kangaroos to be hurt. In a way it’s my fault because I was in their territory. But I just can’t understand why they did that.”
Guardian News and Media Ltd
