Here’s a story about a mama wallaby and a baby wallaby. What is a wallaby in the first place? Well, it’s an Australian animal that is like a small kangaroo. The plural form is wallabies or wallaby.
Wallabies are usually up to 1 or slightly above 1 meter in size. This is the body length not including the tail. They are marsupials, just like kangaroos, opossums or koalas. Marsupials are mammals that carry their babies in a pouch, which is a pocket of skin on the mother’s stomach.
Anyway, in our story the baby is inside its mama’s pouch. Have a look.
A mama wallaby is foraging for something substantial to eat, but there’s only grass.
A substantial meal is a meal that is enough to satisfy hunger. Here’s a substantial breakfast.
Mama: Why are you whimpering, sweetheart? Are you hungry? Baby: No, mama, that’s not it.
Mama: We are so maladjusted to the rapidly changing climate. There used to be lots of food everywhere and now we can’t just go and browse lightheartedly wherever we want. Let alone find some vegetables… This is just a wild goose chase.
If you are on a wild goose chase, you’re wasting your time because you won’t find what you are looking for anyway. It’s an idiom. The noun chase means the act of following and trying to catch a person, animal, etc.
And here you can see wild geese. Now you get the idiom even better. After all, it’s not easy to catch a wild goose, is it?
Baby: Why don’t you stop complaining and just eat the grass? I only have one type of food too, your milk, so it would be fair. Besides, it’s not what’s really bothering me.
Mama: What’s bothering you then?
Baby: Look, mama, I’m really fed up with you treating me like a child and making me sit in your pouch all the time. I don’t want to play second fiddle anymore.
Here we have another idiom, to play second fiddle. It means to have a less important position or status than sb or sth else, to be regarded or treated as less important.
By the way, a fiddle is a popular musical instrument. It’s also called violin. Here you can see it in action. This violinist is definitely not playing second fiddle.
Anyway, let’s continue our story…
Mama: You have itchy feet, sweetheart. You’re not playing second fiddle. You’re very important to me.
Baby: Really, mama? Then fine, I’ll wait a bit longer. It’s not that bad in your pouch after all.
To have itchy feet is also an idiom. It means to have a strong desire to leave a place, job, etc., and go somewhere else. In literal sense if something is itchy, it means you have an unpleasant feeling on your skin or inside your mouth, nose, etc. that makes you want to scratch. For example here the girl is scratching her itchy skin.
Vocabulary
| wallaby | an Australian animal that is like a small kangaroo |
| forage | to search for sth (such as food or supplies) |
| substantial | enough to satisfy hunger |
| whimper | to make a quiet crying sound |
| maladjusted | lacking harmony with one’s environment from failure to adjust one’s desires to the conditions of one’s life |
| rapid | happening in a short amount of time, happening quickly |
| browse | to eat grass |
| lighthearted | having or showing a cheerful and happy nature |
| let alone | – used to refer to sth that is even less likely or possible than the thing previously mentioned |
| wild goose chase | a difficult and long search for sth that is not important or that cannot be found |
| fed up with sth | very tired of sth, angry about sth that has continued for a long time |
| pouch /ˈpaʊtʃ/ | a pocket of skin on the stomachs of some female animals (such as kangaroos and koalas) that is used to carry young |
| play second fiddle | to have a less important position or status than sb or sth else, to be regarded or treated as less important |
| have itchy feet | to have a strong desire to leave a place, job, etc., and go somewhere else |