Noni Houdini

Cole Porter might have had Lighthouse Noni in mind back in the day when he penned the classic song "Don't Fence Me In".

Of course, no koala *wants* to be confined to a fenced yard, let alone an indoor unit, as is the case in our ICU. But treatment at the Koala Hospital involves something of a balancing act between giving koalas a little of the kind of freedom they enjoy in the wild, but not giving them so much freedom that it gets in the way of their treatment.

Some koalas are a flight risk, plain and simple. One such koala is Lighthouse Noni. The two times she's been admitted in as many years, Noni's shown nothing but eagerness to be rid of the place.

Like all our admissions, Noni was named for the area of Port Macquarie she came from - in her case, Lighthouse Beach - but "lighthouse" is an especially apt descriptor for Noni - she likes to be up high and out of reach!

18 June 2008
This is Noni perched up high near the roof beams of her unit, after her admission two years ago.


From brokenpuzzle's gallery.

27 August 2008
After her initial period of treatment, she was moved to outdoor rehabilitation yard where she preferred hanging out well above us mere mortals.


From brokenpuzzle's gallery.

6 June 2010
Noni was admitted again a few weeks ago with a recurrence of her chlamydial infection. I was talking with Peter where we cut leaf outside the ICUs on Sunday morning, when suddenly something caught my eye... It was a koala who seemed to be in no particular hurry, but was strolling about the beams near the roof! And, of course, it was Lighthouse Noni!

The doors to each indoor ICU unit are kept shut and latched. During morning cleaning when the volunteer must make multiple trips in and out of the unit (sweeping, mopping, laying towels, laying newspaper, replenishing leaf), the door is usually just pulled closed. This is generally enough to deter *most* koalas. But, Noni, it seemed, had found a new use for her scimitar claws - to prise open her door and escape! Up there for thinking, Noni!


From koalawrangler's gallery.

We haven't had such a wiley escape artist at the Hospital since the likes of O'Briens Fiona (whom we nicknamed "FiFi Houdini") because of her extraordinary number of escape attempts. Here is a bit of a blurry picture of Fiona doing exactly what I suspect Noni must have done - wiggling the door open with her claws!

O'Briens Fiona
From koalawrangler's gallery.

I reckon that Noni was just checking up on our progress preparing her morning supply of fresh leaf! Peter quickly went and got Noni's pot of nutritional supplement and a ladder. I love the photo below, which looks as though we might have hoped that Noni mind climb down it of her own accord and return to her unit on her own. But, no, Peter trotted up the ladder and got Noni's attention with some food.


From koalawrangler's gallery.

Noni seemed perfectly happy to take the rest of her formula that way. It was like she was saying that her room service was a little late this morning!



Next Peter set about preparing Noni's bag in order to return her to her unit. Each koala has a dedicated bag to prevent any spread of infection between animals.


From koalawrangler's gallery.

Rather than bag her completely, however, Peter just used the bag to prevent Noni from biting him while detaching her. You can see her dangling free as I quickly pocket my camera and set about taking Noni from Peter and returning her to her unit.



Once back under lock and key, I finished feeding Noni her formula and replenished her unit with fresh leaf. She seemed to settle down after that.



Noni's gotten herself quite a reputation in these last few weeks. The other day, she leapt from her gunyah and landed on Peter's feet as he stood in the doorway.

It's obviously become such a common occurrence that Cheyne's put up a warning sign for unsuspecting vollies:


From koalawrangler's gallery.

20 June 2010
Last weekend, I happened to chance upon Emma helping Brooke service Noni's unit. Emma held up a towel to discourage her, but Noni still made a run for it!



The sooner we ship this one out, the sooner we can all rest! Fingers crossed Noni Houdini gets better soon.

Click here to view more snaps of Lighthouse Noni.

June Gum Tips out now!

Click on the cover above to download (5MB) the latest issue of Gum Tips, the Koala Hospital newsletter!

Fluffy earmuffs and Kempsey Carolina's doppelgänger

I spent a bit of time with Oxley Carl last Sunday. He’s been moved to an outside yard after a week or so in ICU. He's old and debilitated and his ears reflect this. Healthy koalas usually have big, round, perky ears. Poor Carl’s ears drooped so flat against his head, he looked a bit like he was wearing fluffy earmuffs.

Oxley Carl
From koalawrangler's gallery.

When koalas are placed in the outside yards, they automatically look a lot happier. Perhaps it’s the way that the sunlight dapples their fur. I wonder if koalas also absorb vitamin D from the sun, which helps ward off depression in humans? In any case, he was a lot more receptive to taking his nutritional supplement, eagerly grabbing at my hand. He managed to unburden of me of the syringe at one point. It must be a Carl thing. The last koala to do that was Nowendoc Carl, another syringe-grabber. It’s amazing how dexterous a koala’s hand is, even with all those claws. Like a stenographer who can still manage to type 80 words per minute despite having inch-long fingernails. I suppose on koalas they are made to select their preferred leaf with surgical accuracy.

Nowendoc Carl - serial syringe-grabber
From koalawrangler's gallery.

He drank every drop of his formula and then proceeded to lick the pot and then moved on to lapping the water from his leaf pot! It’s behaviour they noticed when he was in ICU and have been monitoring. According to the Hospital Supervisor, the fact that Carl is also piddling a lot can mean that his kidneys are failing :( Although, on a positive note, his blood tests have not shown renal failure yet. Koalas often do not show poor blood results till they are really crook, so here's hoping.



I dropped into the Koala Hospital again during the week to look in at the progress in a few of the furry patients.

Hamlyn Daniel, the koala rescued from my street, looks like a new man! Before Easter, his nose was in poor shape. His left nostril was split through to his mouth and hung in an ungainly fashion. It meant that you could really hear him chewing in an amplified way when he ate.

They wanted to wait until his schnoz dried out a bit before surgery. When I saw him a few days ago, Daniel looked a million dollars, as you can see from these before/after pictures. Before too long he should be transferred to an outside yard to continue his rehabilitation. Then, I should expect to see him nibbling eucalyptus in a tree very near our place in the near future.

Hamlyn Daniel - before surgery From koalawrangler's gallery.

Hamlyn Daniel - after surgery From koalawrangler's gallery.

On that note, I recently noticed that the leaves on a beautiful big gum tree in our street have turned brown. It might be autumn, but as eucalyptus trees are not deciduous, ALL eucalypts are evergreen, so any eucalypt that loses its leaves is one sick tree It could be because it is not getting any water or the opposite – it’s in super soggy ground and the roots are drowning.

So I knew the tree was probably dying, I was just not sure why. I spoke to Milicia, the Hospital’s ecological consultant, about the possibility of its getting examined by a tree doctor. After investigating, it turned out that the tree had been hit by lightning – not once but twice! It was well and truly dead. It’s going to be removed by the council, but the Hospital will arrange to plant a sapling in its place.

Emerald Downs Barbara has already been moved to an outside recovery yard. Appropriately, it’s yard 5, which was occupied for some years by long-time resident, Kempsey Carolina. Kempsey was also blind but had her right eye removed, not her left - so Barbara could be Kempsey's mirror image! I’m not sure yet of Barbara’s recovery status: whether she’ll become the ‘new’ Kempsey, as it were, or whether the eyesight in her right eye will improve enough for her to be released. Certainly, yard 5 must have had some good Feng Shui because Kempsey spent some long, happy years there.

Emerald Downs Barbara From koalawrangler's gallery.

Kempsey Carolina From koalawrangler's gallery.

I'm also delighted to report that the whimsically named Waterlily Sweetpea has been released!

Waterlily Sweetpea
From broken_puzzle's gallery.

Click here to view more of this week's koala hospital snaps.

A curious thing we have in common with koalas

I had an email from a researcher at the University of Massachusetts whose speciality is the formation of patterns on surfaces, such as fingerprints.

The reason he contacted me is that he wanted to use the photo I’d taken of the sole of a koala’s foot during an ultrasound.

Lighthouse Di's feet
From koalawrangler's gallery.

Yet another thing that makes koalas unique is that their fingerprints tend to incorporate more dots or dimples than ridges. Amazingly, their fingerprints look very similar to human fingerprints to untrained eye and are unique to each animal, just like in humans. You can read more about it here.

I’d like to see THAT wend its way into a forensic crime series:

“Sorry, but this fingerprint isn’t human. It’s marsupial. Phascolarctos cinereus, to be precise. The suspect you’re looking for is a koala!”

Lighthouse Di
From broken_puzzle's gallery.

Click here to view more koala hospital snaps.

I'm in ICU!

Yes, it's been an appallingly long time since I've written a blog post. I've been a bit koala-d out from doing Gum Tips (the quarterly newsletter, which you can download here), maintaining the Hospital's facebook page, and planning the new architecture for the Hospital computers.

But today I was just plain old koalawrangler on the Sunday morning shift. It was a beautiful Spring day, a bit muggy but sunny and with no sign of rain.

I read the whiteboard on the way in and saw that Crescent Head Jimmy (cover boy of our March Gum Tips) was now sharing the joey yard with Roto Mikki. Barb, who was Jimmy's home-carer, and whose other home-care juvenile, Bea, is now a permanent resident, must be suffering empty-nest syndrome. I could see her over in yard 9 cleaning up in Bea's yard.

Emma (the 'international' vollie) was showering herself in aeroguard - apparently she'd picked 16 ticks off herself last week and was put on antibiotics. She was taking no chances this week. She and Kerrie took yard 10, Alexi and Alison were in the aviaries with Biggy and Littly, and Brooke and the usual Emma were in the front yards with Golfer and Kaylee.

I was left with the four koalas in ICU. First off, I fed Waniora Jonah, a very handsome young adult koala with wet bottom. Peter wanted me to distract him with food while he gave him his jab.

Waniora Jonah
From koalawrangler's gallery.

As I was feeding him, he found myself marvelling at how big his nose seemed. He liked his formula - even if about a quarter of it dribbled onto his fur and I had to wipe it off afterwards with a wet flannel.

Waniora Jonah
From koalawrangler's gallery.

I was glad to see that Emerald Downs Barbara was still there. She was the koala with bilateral corneal ulcers whose unit I had serviced a few weeks ago. She was almost completely blind in both eyes, and although koalas rely more on smell than sight for seeking food, it doesn't help for avoiding dogs and cars. I was a bit worried that she might be euthanased the following week, but here she was!

Emerald Downs Barbara
From koalawrangler's gallery.

Barbara's left eye had been completely removed and apparently some eyesight remained in her right eye, although it still looked cloudy.

Emerald Downs Barbara
From koalawrangler's gallery.

She wandered down gunyah to the bottom rung and finally joined me on the floor. I lured her with a gum sprig back onto the gunyah, still at the bottom. She seemed happy to stay there, so I swept and mopped around her as she sniffed the air. When Chris returned with the leaf, I put a pot beside her and one above so she could make up her own mind. See video of Barb below:



Oxley Carl was a elderly koala who had come in quite debilitated. He made a groan as he moved around the gunyah, possibly due to being backed up in the digestive department.

Barb (human not koala) said his teeth were ground back, which is often how older koalas end up. It means they have trouble getting adequate nutrition in the wild because their teeth can't keep up with the amount of leaf they need to process each day to survive. Barb had put aside some tips for Carl that she thought he might like.

Carl was doddery just like a little old man. I tried to feed him some formula but he really wasn't interested. He just pulled his head back and away from me like I had simply moved too far into his 'personal space'. He nearly lost balance and grabbed the gunyah post to steady himself. So I didn't try to force him.

Oxley Carl
From koalawrangler's gallery.

The last koala in ICU was one I knew something about. Two weeks earlier had had driven past a Koala Hospital crew erecting a koala trap around a tree in Hamlyn Drive, just around the corner from where I live.

Setting a trap for an injured koala in Hamlyn Drive
From koalawrangler's gallery.

The story was a little unclear, the local utility workers claimed to have seen an injured koala in the tree and nearby residents saw blood on the asphalt. The koala might have taken a tumble (which is unusual in well koalas). The koala was high up in the tree and so Peter and crew were setting up a trap consisting of corflute signs and a cage with some leaf in it. I got out of my car and asked, somewhat unhelpfully, if they needed a big piece of cheese for the trap.

I checked the trap myself a few times that day, but the koala was still sky-high. Then, when I was in ICU, there he was: Hamlyn Daniel.

Hamlyn Daniel
From koalawrangler's gallery.

He had certainly sustained some nasty injuries to his face. But he'd had more than just a little 'bark' off (as they say in the biz). His right nostril look like it had been split open. Instead of falling from his tree, it was now thought he might have been hit by a car and returned to his tree to 'lick his wound's, as it were. Now, he was happily eating away at his leaf, but it was the noisiest chewing I had ever heard - no doubt because his poor lip and nose were gaping a bit.

Daniel had already had some of his wounds sewn up and was scheduled to get his nose stitched up properly after Easter (they were waiting for it to dry out a bit first).

Otherwise, he looked okay, and should be much better in a few weeks after his surgery. I hope I'll be seeing him back around the trees in Hamlyn Drive in no time!

Click here to view more of today's Koala Hospital snaps.