The Illusive Kangaroose

The Knox County deputy sheriff was a very imposing character as he stepped into the interrogation room. His brown uniform was starched as stiff as his crew cut was short. His personality was sculpted as firmly as his upper body. His entire working existence was built around being a force of nature in whatever room he walked in to. He considered himself to be a lean mean law enforcement machine and his coworkers knew it. Standing in his double polished black tactical boots he stood six foot three inches tall making Deputy Oscar McGuire very hard not to notice.

The hollow looking young man, although the word man was a stretch, looked lost. His jeans were worn and dirty and, like the guy wearing them, they needed a good washing. His teeth were of a similar shade of yuck as his ash blonde hair. His skin was tanned with a very unhealthy pallor. His eyes were bright blue, though a tad vacant. Most people thought they were his best feature, and Arno Woodhouse Jr was happy with that. “Punkin”, to his friends, had accepted from a young age that his brain was never going to be.

Deputy McGuire smoothly sat on the metal chair across from Punkin Woodhouse, stared him down for a minute before he began. “Arno, there has been a BOLO out across three counties for a vehicle matching the description of your sorry excuse for a truck. Can you elaborate on what the hell you have been up to?”

AWJ sat there his head tilted slowly to the left to signal interest in the conversation, and blinked his eyes twice before responding, “Deputy you might as well call me Punkin. I expect we are going to be here a while so we might as well be on friendly terms.” After pausing to collect his thoughts he continued, “There seemed to be more than one question in your opening statement. I am not sure which if any I am expected to answer.”

“OK, Punkin, I will speak in shorter sentences for you. The sheriff’s departments in Clay, Bell, and Harlan counties have been looking for a piece of crap mid 1980s Chevy Silverado truck. The truck that we pulled you over in is a reasonable match to what they are all looking for. My first question is which county should I turn you over to?”

“Well deputy, I probably shouldn’t be the one to answer that question. They may all have legitimate claims.” For someone with a suspected low IQ Punkin Woodhouse was a smooth talker.

Deputy McGuire took a deep breath before continuing because he didn’t want this questioning to last as long as it looked like it might, “Punkin, there are 36 charges being filed across three counties. There are multiple accounts of dangerous driving, failure to stop, destruction of public property. I would suggest that you have been causing some cross-country mayhem. Oh, I almost forgot, the state parkies are looking to file charges too. Close to 50 charges in total suggest you have been very dedicated in whatever you were doing. So please help me understand what that was”

“I was hunting”

“What the hell were you hunting that required so much mayhem and ruination?”

Straightening in his chair Punkin said “I was hunting the kangaroose that killed my pa!” 

“Well son you better tell me what a kangaroose is.” Oscar asked in his best condescending voice.

“Everyone knows what a Jackalope is. A kangaroose is just exponentially bigger and one killed my pa two years ago. I saw it again ten days ago. I was driven crazy with revenge.”

Deputy McGuire’s condescension was oozing out by this point “Son, you do realize the myths of the jackalope are just to fool with tourists and simple minded folks. They don’t exist”

Sitting straighter in his chair Punkin responded with “Deputy you are not as worldly as you may think. There are many animals in the world that people refuse to admit exist. My uncle Cedric has two jackalope skulls mounted on the wall of his tanning shed. A kangaroose is just bigger, much bigger. I think they are a twisted science experiment where some scientist guys crossed a kangaroo and moose, probably trying to create a new form of livestock. The one that killed my pa two years ago must have weighed 600 hundred pounds. I shot part of his left ear off at the time. That was how I recognized the abomination!”

Deputy McGuire was becoming equal parts frustrated and amused, “Punkin,” he started, “that is just wrong on so many levels, physically and scientifically just impossible….”

“Deputy Big Man,” Punkin interrupted, “I grew up watching those documentaries about the turtles in New York City who were contaminated by some bad chemical biohazard stuff. They were lucky though. They survived to grow up to become vigilante crime fighters. Four of them now live in the subway system, but fight crime on the streets.” 

“Punkin that was just a few below average movies based on comic books”

“My pa said they were real and he never lied to me. That damn mean kangaroose was just evil. It reacted a way too aggressively to my pa and me. We weren’t hunting that far out of season. Pa is dead and buried out behind our house, gone two years now, and that rampaging science experiment is still running loose.”

After becoming tired of taking notes from this ludicrous exchange, Deputy McGuire put his pen on top of the clip board, standing up he said he would be back shortly. He left Punkin Woodhouse to his own thoughts. 

As he walked past the department’s data entry clerk he put the clip board on her desk and said “Wanda, you can start with this. I need a coffee & a cigarette before I face round two”.

Wanda took a quick glance and then she was drawn to the “Other comments” box. Oscar had written “Either too much meth or not enough roots on the Woodhouse family tree.”