The Australian Rugby team, Western Force 14, is facing serious accusations, possible fines and an eternity being molested by demons in the darkest pits of hell after a recent "bonding" trip to Rottnest Island, a small island off the Western coast of Australia. The players are accused of tormenting and torturing countless small, endangered marsupials called quokkas, native only Western Australia and the islands off the southwest of the continent.
Why do you persecute me?
According to a witness--Sydney resident, Dan Andrews--the players pursued, trapped, grabbed and even "hammer tossed" the poor little creatures in an inebriated frenzy after some late night drinking at a bar on the island. Some of the team members were ...
...dressed "only in their underwear" according to this article in Stuff.co.nz, which could only have further traumatized the virginal quokkas.
According to Andrews, the players chased around the little creatures with milk crates, lunged at them, and after trapping them tossed the crates with the quokkas still in them. "It was horrible to see them pick on little animals," he said, "Some of them were just babies and they only weigh three to five kilograms."
A player on Western Force, seen here, kicking a new born quokka through the uprights.
After pleading unsuccessfully with them to stop, Andrews said he finally just left the scene so as not to give the players an audience.
Western Force 14 has been under some scrutiny lately for assault charges, illegal 'fund-raising' and other brush-ins with the law, but nothing yet compares with grabbing baby marsupials and hurling them across a field.
Quokkas, in sharp contrast to drunken rugby players, are known for displaying absolutely no aggression. They often don't even show fear toward humans and are known for their lack of protest at being handled, though it is a $100 fine to do so. Quokkas and professional rugby players do share one telling attribute in common, however. Both species tend to score the same on standardized IQ tests.
In the past decade or so, due to satellite television, many young quokkas dream of one day being punted in an American football match.
According to Wikipedia, the little guys are more than steeped in the history of the particular island where their abuse took place:
"The Dutch mariner Samuel Volckertzoon wrote of sighting "a wild cat" on Rottnest Island in 1658. In 1696 Willem de Vlamingh mistook them for rats and named the island "Rottenest", Dutch for 'rat nest'."
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Comments
Regrettably, quokka abuse on Rottnest is something of a problem, and people are charged regularly (some for things far more serious than even throwing them around in beer crates). The Rottnest quokkas are very trusting of people. Indeed, years of tourist feedings mean that they are more likely to approach people than run away.
Posted by: Christopher Taylor | November 28, 2007 7:40 PM
they like red cordial and beetle grubs too. Or at least gorged themselves on both when I offered to them. Possibly they were thirsty - the lack of freshwater on the island after all the limestone mining if their biggest problem, after Quokka Soccer
Posted by: Drhoz! | December 2, 2007 6:14 PM