A Googong man has undergone emergency surgery on his eyes after being attacked while checking on a kangaroo he initially thought was dead.
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Billy Willox stopped on the side of Googong Road, south of Queanbeyan, after seeing something move as a kangaroo lay on the road earlier this month.
Mr Willox said he thought the movement might have been a stranded joey, but "in a flash", the kangaroo he thought was dead jumped up and went for his eyes.
"It was fast, really fast. I didn't even get that close to it and it suddenly just got up," he told The Canberra Times.
"It scratched at my eyes and my face and started clawing at my back.
"I gave it a kick and it backed away a bit, so I got in the car."
Mr Willox, who moved to Australia from Scotland in 1982, said he initially feared he had lost the sight in one eye.
With blood in his eyes, he managed to drive home and ask his partner Kerrie Venables to take him to Queanbeyan Hospital.
He later ended up in Canberra Hospital, where he underwent surgery to repair torn ligaments and skin tissue around his eyes and had a tetanus shot.
He has since returned to work as a bus driver.
"All in all, I'm a lucky guy on so many fronts," Mr Willox said.
"When it happened I thought the worst; that I'd lost the sight in one of my eyes.
"It actually just got me in behind the eyelid so I had some laser surgery done."
Mr Willox said by speaking about the incident, he hoped to make people aware of the need to be careful as increasing numbers of animals move towards roads in the dry conditions.
"We tend to think they're quite friendly, but in this situation, when he got up he was one angry kangaroo," he said.
ACT Parks and Conservation Service ranger Joel Patterson said anyone who came across a dead or injured animal on the road should call for help, not try to move it themselves.
For incidents in the ACT, he said people could call Access Canberra 24 hours a day on 13 22 81 and ask for a ranger to be sent out.
"The poor guy had the best of intentions," Mr Patterson said of Mr Willox's experience.
"It might be an instinct for us to want to help, but an injured animal is a very difficult thing to deal with."
Mr Patterson said rangers had the benefit of training and protective gear to help them deal with wildlife on the roads safely.
"Because of the way Canberra's roads are set up, a lot of the animals are killed on higher speed roads, in the 80 or 100 [km/h] zones," he said.
"There's also the threat of traffic [hitting people who try to move roadkill]."
In May, a 35-year-old woman was taken to Canberra Hospital after being hit by a car while trying to remove a kangaroo she had hit from the Monaro Highway.
