Kerry Hill, age 14, of Santa Maria, California, for his question:

What is a flying kangaroo?

The female kangaroo is called a "flier" and the leaping lady deserves her poetic name. Her mate is called a "boomer", possibly because he makes a booming racket by thumping his mighty back legs on the ground. When flier and boomer have a child, he or she is called a "Joey". However, if the term flying kangaroo refers to a kangaroo that actually gets airborne, we must look farther afield.

The kangaroo is the giant of the marsupials and we tend to think of him as representing all of them. We might refer to them as kangaroo type animals. This is hardly fair, though it would include the Australian phalangers. It so happens that these little beauties glide through the air like flying squirrels. We could call them flying kangaroos, though this would require quite a flight of the imagination.