 afterthoughts BY KATHRYN DRURY WAGNER

executive editor

Kangaroo You

I
Beasts bounce through Kalihi Valley—and my imagination.
i was listening to story ideas during a meeting recently toted him downtown for show-and-tell.
when our assistant editor, Tiffany, brought up the wallabies. “I got to see a wallaby without having to go root around in
She said there was a colony of the small Australian mammals in the brush,” Heckathorn enthused. He noted that Lazell had
Kalihi Valley and no one had counted their numbers in a while. kept a firm grip on the animal “so he wouldn’t escape and go to
Wait, what? Murphy’s,” the bar down the street.
I’ve lived here seven years and this is the first I’ve heard of Since Heckathorn’s article, however, the wallabies have gone
this—who’s been holding out on me? There’s a clan of feral, AWOL. No one knows how many still exist in Hawai‘i, since the
pint-size kangaroos bouncing around O‘ahu? Get outta here. Department of Land and Natural Resources has not had fund-
But this mythical marsupial seems legit; unlike the sightings ing to study the population since the 1990s.
of Big Foot, there was proof of the wallabies’ existence, right in Presumably, No. 113 was returned to the wild shortly after
our August 1989 issue. his encounter with HONOLULU.
John Heckathorn, the former Here’s what I think happened
editor of HONOLULU and a next.
current contributing editor, Upon his return to Kalihi Val-
had written an article, “The ley, Wally No. 113 brought back
Kangaroos of the Ko‘olaus.” The some of the mysterious ways of
colony of wallabies was esti- a human office. He gathered his
mated, at that time, to be 100 to furry tribe and told unto them of
250 in number, all descendants fax machines, bifocals and Tup-
of a pair that had escaped from a perware. Nodding their fuzzy
private collection in 1916. ears, they soaked in this knowl-
The article noted that the edge, and they evolved. En-
wallabies are the size of small sconced in their valley Habitrail
dogs, and rarely seen, though for more than 20 years, here’s
one once wandered “onto the what they have been up to:
second floor of Tripler Medi- Perfected an herbed potato
cal Center and was given to the salad, which has replaced leaves
Honolulu Zoo.” and bark as their main food
By this time, I would have staple.
believed anything. But it gets Opened a repertory theater.
weirder. This fall, the wallabies are put-
Heckathorn had interviewed ting on Guys and Dolls.
biologist Skip Lazell, who was Two female wallabies have
studying the wallaby species. In launched a spa line, offering
photo: linny morris, illustration: jing jing tsong

a sidebar, he noted that Lazell exquisite natural body care and

had stopped by the magazine’s
then-office on Merchant Street with a suspiciously moving bur-
lap sack. Inside was a “cute, real nippy” male wallaby, specimen
No. 113, that Lazell had trapped that morning for research.
Wait; there was a live wallaby in the HONOLULU office?
I called Heckathorn immediately.
“I know this was 20 years ago, but I have to ask: Seriously,
you met a wallaby?”
“Yes! They are ferocious little bundles of energy,” Heckath-
orn said. “That wallaby was not happy.”
Well, sure, poor wallaby. He thought he was about to have a nice
fruit snack when boom! Someone threw a bag over his head and
luxurious, organic lotions, body
washes and lip balms in scents such as passion fruit and guava.
Organized a Russell Crowe film festival. Crowe himself
attended in 2007, though last year’s headliner was Edward
Norton.
Created a wallaby family tree using the free genealogy data-
bases of the Mormon church.
Sadly, it’s not all good news: Two juvenile males were re-
cently arrested for posing as Nigerian scam artists on an e-mail
targeting senior citizens.
And what became of wallaby No. 113?
You might see him once in awhile over at Murphy’s.

140 september 2009 www.honolulumagazine.com