Kangaroos as mascots are relatively rare, and though a handful of the springy fur balls dot the national prep landscape, it’s unlikely there’s a ‘Roo out there with more of an outback story than Lizzie the purple-and-white Kangaroo from Lake Washington High School in Kirkland.

The animal from Down Under has no real connection to the Eastside and the ‘K’ doesn’t exactly rhyme with the name of the school.

And as legend has it, the mascot was meant to be that way.

Dating back to the late 1800s, there was only one high school in the area — Kirkland High, home of the Hornets. All was fine until the 1930s when, according to old timers’ stories relayed through Loita Hawkinson of the Kirkland Heritage Society, things got nasty.

“The participants at the games wrote a jingle using hornets and a rather rude phrase, at that time,” Hawkinson said. “You can figure out what it was — something rhyming using hornets.”

As one can imagine, the school district didn’t take kindly to the tune or lyrics of “horny hornets,” and as punishment decided to make the students rename the mascot.

But, being teenagers, the Kirkland High School students took things sideways.

“The students were really upset at losing the hornet name, and so they picked the silliest mascot they could think of,” Hawkinson said. “They thought [the district] would go back on their word and let them use ‘hornets’ again.”

The school moved from Market Street and rebuilt in its current location in the mid-1940s, and when the population boomed around Lake Washington during World War II, the school was renamed Lake Washington High School.

Juanita High School was opened in 1971, and as the years have passed, most if not all of the students who took part in the Kangs’ inception have since passed on themselves.