We hold this truth to be self-evident: that a house with three children in it does not have a spare room.
THE AMENDMENT, AS WRITTEN
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
OPENING STATEMENT
Sorry. Sorry, hold on.
Not now. Mum is testifying. Because Mum is testifying. Because it’s the Constitution, that’s why. Back in. All the way in. Thank you.
Right.
I am a Red Kangaroo, and I am going to keep this short, because at this moment I have three children at three different stages of development, and I am the house for two of them.
For the record: I am the largest marsupial alive. I can do better than thirty-five miles an hour across open ground, and I can clear a fence you paid good money for without slowing down. The females of my kind are blue-grey. They call us blue flyers. I have never flown. I have been over a great many fences, which the fences would tell you is close enough.
A group of us is called a mob. I have never understood it. We are extremely organized.
The males are called boomers. I am not making that up. They spend the season standing up very straight, puffing out their chests, and boxing one another in front of everybody, and then they leave. You have boomers too, I gather. They also don’t help with the house.
I was asked to speak on the Third Amendment. I was told it is the least argued amendment in your entire Constitution. Nobody fights about it. Nobody brings it up at dinner.
I would like to explain why. It is because of mothers.
ARTICLE I: ON THE HOUSE
I am going to describe my situation slowly, for the men in the room.
I have a joey at foot. He is out of the pouch. He eats grass. He still puts his head in to drink, and he still tries to climb all the way back in when something startles him, and he no longer fits, and he knows it, and he tries anyway.
I have a joey in the pouch. Small. Attached. Growing.
And I have an embryo, a tiny one, on hold. Paused. Waiting. I can pause a pregnancy until there is room for it, and I can keep it paused for months, and then, when the one in the pouch moves out, the waiting one starts up again as if nothing happened.
At the same time, from two different teats, I make two different kinds of milk: one for the newborn, one for the big one who should frankly be eating grass by now.
Before each new one arrives, I clean the whole pouch, top to bottom, with my tongue. Inspection standards.
And then move-in day. My newborn is the size of a jellybean. Blind. Hardly any back legs to speak of. He climbs from where he’s born up through my fur to the pouch, by himself, in a few minutes, and finds the teat, and holds on. Nobody shows him the way. Nobody carries a box. Your son needed four friends and a van, and he still left the lamp.
I am a three-bedroom house with a waiting list. I am the building, the kitchen and the plumbing. I run it standing up. In a drought.
Do you know what I do not have room for?
A soldier. Any soldier. Not even a small, polite one who says he’ll keep to himself.