Incident in the antipodes

Here's a link to something I wrote a few years back about a dramatic encounter I had with a kangaroo, when I was eighteen (I'm afraid it didn't occur to me to ask the kangaroo his age).

The editor made a few changes that still annoy me (including the title!). Most significantly, there is a character (or, rather, a person, since he's real) named Sam whose age was changed from fourteen to eighteen, presumably because the editor found it shocking for a fourteen-year-old to be playing around with a rifle. But he was fourteen - this isn't fiction. Whether changing his age makes him, or me, more 'sympathetic' (whatever that means) is rather beside the point.

Nevertheless, take full responsibility.