In the U.S., you're rarely treated to the sight of animals wrestling in the middle of the street on your way to work. Um, Dorothy, we're not in Kansas anymore. A koala-bear fight stopped traffic in Australia, and these super cuddly, exotic animals had no qualms about holding up commuters as they settled their differences in the middle of the road. Wouldn't it be great to use this as an excuse for being late for work? Like, yeah, I would have been on time, but I was held up because there were some bears fighting in the middle of the road.
That's what happened earlier this week, when a woman in Stirling, Australia, posted a video to Facebook showing two koalas duking it out in the middle of the road, according to the Daily Telegraph. The woman, Marguerite Smith, believes that the fight may have been over a lady koala, the Telegraph reported, though the actual causes are unclear. The video has now received over 15 million views because it's kind of, well, iconic? You just have to see it to believe it.
Seriously, this sounds like it's right out of the playbook of Will & Grace's Karen Walker. Just add "koala bears" to one of her iconic one liners and it sounds like a perfectly plausible Karen Walker excuse. "Sorry I'm late. Oh God, that sounded insincere ... I'm late" ... because there were koala bears fighting on Park Avenue. However, in Australia this is apparently a valid reason for missing that afternoon staff meeting. Because, Koala bears. Fighting. In the middle of the street. Totally believable. Kind of like on Gilmore Girls when Rory told her teacher she was late because a deer hit her car. If only she'd had a camera phone.
According to the website Koala-Bears.org, "Koalas spend [18 to 20] hours each day resting and sleeping in trees. They only come to the ground when moving from one tree to another. When they are not sleeping, koalas are often eating. They spend less than one percent of their day in other activities, such as grooming, traveling between trees, or finding a mate." Fighting is definitively not one of those activities, yet here we are, Australia.
So, these two Koala bears decided to spend the one percent of the time they're upright engaged in a traffic-stopping kerfuffle. One of the reasons reported for the sedentary lifestyle of Koala bears is their diet. Eucalyptus leaves, the Koala's main food source, are low in nutrients, which means these two bears possibly stumbled onto some energy-inducing plants, or perhaps they found a discarded protein shake to fuel their fight.
While they did summon the strength to fight with each other, these Koalas couldn't be bothered with worrying about those pesky humans who needed to get to work. But, that didn't stop Smith from asking them to cool it. In her video, Smith said, "C'mon boys. How am I going to get to work?" And, because every good street fight needs a theme song, Daily Telegraph Deputy Editor Peter Brown even paired the video with the music from the boxing movie Rocky.
While Australian commuters likely see things people don't witness in the states, Smith told the Daily Telegraph that the bear fight was a first for her. "I’m on the road for work all the time and see great things. But this was something I’ve never seen and I live in Stirling!" The sight is so rare, you know because Koala bears are lazy, that the Koala bear fight video has been viewed more than 5 million times in 24 hours, the Telegraph reported.
Apparently no one is immune from the stress of 2017. In fact, a few weeks ago an opossum in Florida broke into a liquor store and drank a bottle of whiskey. Between the holidays, and the impending apocalypse, animals are starting to act more and more like stressed-out humans. So, just what do you do when you happen upon a bear fight? Is it an emergency? One motorcycle driver thought so, and flipped on his hazard lights.
It also seems that humans aren't the only ones who get road rage. Instead of yelling expletives, Koala bears just get right down to business. Humans, don't try this. It's better to just keep yelling at traffic inside the safety of your car. The last thing we need is two humans stoping traffic with their WWE wrestling moves.
Brown speculated that the matter was resolved when the Koala bears put each other in sleeper holds, and then they likely went back to their full-time jobs of napping.
