The Real Koala Whisperer

AKA Prepare To Go Awwwwwwww!!!!

Following my adventures with Jeff, KB sent me an email to send to Peggy, to continue her love affair with all things koala. I did indeed send the email to Peggy however the pictures were just too amazing (and fricking cute) not to share with you all.

It is believed these baby koalas were rescued from a mother killed by a car. As mother koalas are hugely protective over their children, seeing pictures of koalas this young is incredibly rare. This really is phenomenal. Also, full marks to the wildlife personnel who reared the koalas. For months baby koalas live on a special koala milk so hand rearing them like this is incredibly labour intensive.

The new baby koala, called a “joey”, is roughly 2 centimetres long and weighs less than 1 gram, looking  rather like a pink jellybean as it is totally hairless, blind and has no ears.

Normally a joey makes its way from the birth canal to the pouch, where it will live for six to seven months. In the pouch it would attach itself to the mother’s teat, which swells to fill its mouth, preventing the joey from being dislodged from its source of food.

The young koala would drink only mother’s milk for the first six to seven months of its life and would remain in the pouch for all of that time, slowly growing and developing eyes, ears, fur etc.

At about 22 weeks, its eyes open and it begins to peep out of the pouch.

 From about 22 to 30 weeks, it begins to feed upon a substance called “pap” which the mother produces in addition to milk. Pap is a specialised form of faeces which forms an important part of the young koala’s diet, allowing it to make the transition from milk to eucalyptus leaves. How the wildlife personnel reproduced this I do not know. Let’s assume they did and look at the cute pictures.

The joey would remain with its mother for another six months or so, riding on her back, and feeding on both milk and eucalyptus leaves until weaning is completed at about 12 months of age.

 

Thanks to KB for the excellent pictures which I have mercilessly plundered and thanks to Peggy for letting me steal her email.

However, seriously, that was an 11 on the cuteness scale.

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Update on Jeff

Jeff, the attitude Koala, was a massive hit with everyone yesterday.

I visited where I left him yesterday and, good news, he’s moved on to a less suicidal tree as he was nowhere to be seen on the tree I left him.  Even more happily, there was no evidence of koala pâté on the road. This makes me happy.

In honour, Inappropriate Saturday will take a miss this week to allow more pics of Jeff. Not used yesterday as they are slightly blurry (So no grief from you KB. You do better with an iPhone that is playing Glee.)

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The Koala Whisperer

Peggy, this post is for you.

Even though I am on nights I do overtime whenever I can grab it to pay for my ridiculously extravagant travelling bug. As such, I was on the way to work this morning at 0730 despite having finished a night shift less than 24 hours before. So I am not used to the morning traffic and I am certainly not used to this.

A full-grown koala, hopelessly lost, walking along a busy (and soon to be busier) arterial road. No one seemed to be noticing and were driving at a great rate of knots. I, however, was appalled at how lost this koala was and no gum trees in sight. (Also, as I am sure Brad, Lauren and Lloyd will all attest, to my eternal shame, the very first thing I thought when I saw him was “Score!!!!!!!! I can BLOG about this!!!!!!”) I felt certain if I did not help the poor thing he was going to get squished by a car.

So despite the fact this would make me late for work I pulled off the road and got out to help the koala, whom I had now named Jeff. (All koalas are called Jeff, Peggy.  This is a known fact.)

Jeff is looking at me as though I am completely mad as, in addition to yelling encouraging things to him such as “Come this way Jeff, I think I saw a gum tree up the hill.” (I speak fluent koala), I am also photographing the crap out of him with my iPhone and getting reeeeeeeallllllly frustrated that my play mix of Glee songs wont shut up as Jeff appears to not be a Glee fan and is finding their style of bland, inoffensive covers of pop songs rather grating.

When you have a suicidal koala, you try not to upset them further.

Jeff continues to walk towards his doom as he tries to cross the road. I am trying to herd him away from the road and towards the less busy street while Poker Face is being played. Jeff appears to particularly find this song annoying (though I quite like it) and looks as though he is gonna bolt onto the road until I manage to stop the iPhone and shut Glee the f… up.

I now know that koalas can give humans looks of total disdain. Which just goes to show you where I stand in the pecking order of life when even koalas are giving you grief. His face was all, “Dude! You listen to that?????!!!!”

Jeff and I had clearly bonded at this point and he was much happier to be herded away from his path of suicide onto the flowing road.  All of my years as a suicide counsellor came to my aid as I was able to support Jeff from his path of destruction with such words of comfort as “There, there.” (normally said as you pat someone on the shoulder. I didn’t pat jeff on the shoulder as, you see those funky claws, Jeff would have shred me up.) I also added “It’s always darkest before the dawn” which, if you’re a suicide counsellor, is RollsRoyce stuff.

I managed to steer Jeff off the busy arterial street onto a side road where I could control the traffic and, if I could get him across the side road, he would have a number of trees to climb up and hide until nightfall and find something more suitable. Jeff had other ideas though as he thought the flagpole was possibly his new home. I began to suspect Jeff may have had mental problems as he tries to climb the flagpole.

 

After the third attempt at trying to climb the flag pole Jeff was starting to p… me off so I threatened him with more Glee music if he didn’t get his ass across the road to where all the real trees were.

And here is where I actually stopped taking pictures and helped Jeff out. Herding him across the road and standing in front of him so people wouldn’t drive over him. Everyone could see me, I can be seen from space, but poor Jeff would have been koala pate had I not stood there and blocked traffic. What was wonderful were people’s faces as they realised I wasn’t an annoying madman stopping the traffic for no apparent reason but their looks of realisation as they all saw Jeff and went “F…,that’s a koala!!!”

Jeff got across the road very safely and then took his own sweet time deciding which tree he was going to go live in.

Jeff ultimately went to live in a tree right smack bang next to the road so I am not entirely sure I curbed his suicidal tendencies. By this time I was half an hour late for work * and had to leave Jeff to his own devices. I had done my job and got him across the road safely. Last I saw Jeff he was happily up the tree ready to live happy ever after. As I drove past him he gave me a look of acknowledgement. It seemed to say “Thank God you’re taking that f…ing music with you.” You’re welcome Jeff. **

You haven’t lived until you have had grief from a recalcitrant koala.

* To their credit, work didn’t care. I had loads of picture proof of what I’d been doing and everyone spent ages going awwwww over the koala pictures.

** Jeff had attitude to spare. As do all koalas. Another little known fact.

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