August 11, 2005—We've got a good one, mates: A kangaroo and a hotel manager walk into a bar … Actually, Kathy Noble, proprietress of the Comet Inn in Australia, is doing her best to keep this 18-month-old orphaned joey from bothering the customers.

And occasionally—as seen in this photograph taken today—she has to escort him outside.

Noble found the social marsupial, known as Boomer, on the side of the road in the pouch of his dead mother. She raised him on the grounds of her 127-year-old bed-and-breakfast, about 74 miles (120 kilometers) west of Sydney. A well-meaning guest accidentally let him inside the bar, which is now one of his favorite haunts.

Unfortunately, interactions between people and kangaroos aren't always this jovial. Urban growth in Australia is encroaching on wildlife territories, and the kangaroo population is becoming more aggressive.

In one notable case, a wild kangaroo mauled a 13-year-old boy on a Grafton golf course while he was searching the bushes for a lost ball. (See "Kangaroo Attacks in Australia Spotlight Growing Turf War.")

—Victoria Gilman

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