Poor Coastlands Steve!

My heart really went out to Coastlands Steve today. Firstly, it’s the second time he’s been in that, that I’m aware of. Last time, he was hit by a car and spent considerable time in homecare under the watchful eye of Joyce. Now he's back in the Hospital again. And today, he was a bit out of sorts.

Coastlands Steve
From koalawrangler's gallery.

He was missing from his yard when Pete did his morning rounds. At first, he feared Steve had taken off into Macquarie Nature Reserve, but, no, he was much closer at hand. He had travelled from his own yard 1 to yard 3 just across the way.

Coastlands Steve
From koalawrangler's gallery.

Yard 3 is home to Amira Ruby, a gorgeous little female koala who delighted us with her placid demeanour and range of delightfully coloured bandages during her time in ICU.

Amira Ruby, in ICU From koalawrangler's gallery.

Amira Ruby, today From koalawrangler's gallery.

When Pete found Steve in Ruby's yard, Steve was looking a bit sorry for himself. He'd scraped a bit of 'bark' off his nose - possibly from colliding with the colourbond fence during his escape attempt. The fences are positioned at least 2 metres apart, since that is the maximum distance a koala can jump. However, it IS mating season again. I know this for sure as I heard our local wild koala, whom we've dubbed Bonky Bill, letting his mating call ring out through the neighbourhood for the first time this season. Spring is around the corner and so is mating.

Amira Ruby
From koalawrangler's gallery.

Perhaps Steve thought Amira Ruby looked like a bit of alright. Pete suspects that - although she looks like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth - Ruby probably put up a bit of a fight. So not only did Steve scrape his nose in the process, he also probably got a bit of biffo for his efforts when he got there.

Poor old Steve! No wonder he was looking a little sorry for himself this morning. So I made sure I picked him an EXTRA big fluffy bundle of leaf and decked his gunyah out like it was a Christmas tree.

I got to see loads of other koalas I didn't expect to today. Newport Bridge Gloria has been back in for a while, but as she's been sharing the expanses of yard 9 with Birthday Girl, I've barely seen her down on ground level.

Newport Bridge Gloria
From koalawrangler's gallery.

Today, she came down to visit and she looked just like I remembered her. We have a bit of a 'history', you see. I first encountered Gloria during her time on the University of Sydney research trials back in 2007. She made her way through the treatment, but had been in a number of other times since. During one particularly memorable visit, I made the brilliant decision to transfer Gloria from the ground to the gunyah to make it easier for a volunteer to feed her. It all went pear-shaped. She bit me...HARD...luckily connecting with my fingernail, or else she would probably have bit through my finger. And, worse still, I kind of, well, let her drop out of my grasp as the pain was just excruciating! Gloria was fine, she just sort of tumbled free and made her own way up on to the gunyah. Phew!

Newport Bridge Gloria
From koalawrangler's gallery.

Today, there were no such dramas fortunately. She looked keen to see me but I'm not deluding myself; it's only because she mistook my camera for a feed pot.





She followed me all over the place, to the point that I was concerned she might leap on me. Fortunately Peter arrived with a basket for transporting koalas. Gloria was to be released this morning! Peter showed he how koala handling was really done by effortlessly plucking Gloria off the gunyah and placing her in the basket.

Newport Bridge Gloria
From koalawrangler's gallery.

Gloria has been admitted 8 times already - most recently for motor vehicle accidents; fingers crossed she still has another life left.

Another koala I didn't expect to see today was Oxley Kaylee. Since having her rear left leg amputated, she has been doing marvelously well.

Oxley Kaylee
From koalawrangler's gallery.

I almost never see her down from her tree. Brooke had cleaned her yard and I set about preparing his leaf. Usually I spray the leaf before placing it in the pots. It's trickier having to juggle a bunch of leaf as you spray it, but it's preferable to showering the koala! In Kaylee's case, she was nowhere to be seen so I popped the last bunch in the pot and turned to fire up the hose. But in the time it took for me to turn around, there she was! She can get up quite a speed on only one back leg! It's incredible watching her thigh joint rotate under her fur as she moves about.



Another old friend is back in ICU. Lake Private was in with us back in 2007. He was found wandering about, disoriented, so he's back with us for a little R&R. Pete asked me to feed him and he lapped it up like he remembered it well. Hopefully, he will get some energy back after a little rest and TLC at the Hospital.

Lake Private
From koalawrangler's gallery.

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

Koalas in the news

It's a sign!
From youngdoo's gallery.

It started with a little press release, suggesting that adopting a koala for Christmas might be a more meaningful way to spend your dough than buying Dad the ubiquitous three-pack of socks from Lowes. The story -- Forget socks, adopt a koala for Christmas -- got picked up by Reuters and went viral. The message to adopt a koala for a loved one for Christmas ended up on blogs, news services and websites around the world. By the time the story found its way to a paper in India, the koalas were no longer alternative gifts to socks, they were in the socks: Koalas in socks!.

The Hospital has been flat-chat (gratefully so) filling the orders that began flooding in from around the world: World donates $16,000 to our koalas.

The Hospital is just delighted by the response and can't wait to start putting the money to good koala use.

On a separate note, I (belatedly) came across this interesting article describing how scientists have been utilising mobile phone technology to monitor koala mating noises: Mobile phones eavesdrop on Aussie koalas. Well, if that's all it takes, I could easily have lobbed my phone out the window these last few nights: the koalas hanging around our backyard have been bellowing up a storm lately.

You can adopt a koala all year round here.

Bowden Sam: the power of the fluffy flap

Bowden Sam
From broken_puzzle's gallery.

A few months ago we moved to a part of Port Macquarie that is well-trafficked by koalas (and not so well-trafficked by traffic, fortunately). We discovered the "koality" of the neighbourhood when the cries of a pair of loved-up wahlees (as we call them in the trade) lullabied us to sleep one Spring night. Our new "habitat" butts against a green-belt which is zoned as genuine koala habitat - a koala corridor right in our backyard.

Shortly before the move, a koala was rescued very near our new house, in a street called Bowden Road. Rescuers Peter and Manda named the rescuee "Bowden Sam" (after the street name, which is our custom) and after the name of an associated human - usually the rescuer, the person who called in to report the koala, or, in my case, the koalawrangler who happened to be relocating to a house nearby.

Sam's release part I
From broken_puzzle's gallery.

Around the time of Sam’s release, we moved into our new house. Straightaway, we took a walk around the area hoping we'd be lucky enough to spot one of our tree-dwelling marsupial neighbours. We were spoilt: we saw not one but two koalas, and one of these was in Bowden Road.

The koala in question wasn't terribly high up (it wasn't a terribly high tree); in fact, I was a bit concerned that it contained a koala at all since the tree was at a suburban crossroads, surrounded by brick homes with dog-filled backyards and kids riding about on their bikes. This was not exactly dense, protective foliage.

Sam's release part II
From broken_puzzle's gallery.

It was heading into twilight so the koala seemed fairly alert, peering down at us with some interest. I circled the tree, looking out for the wahlee's Koala Hospital eartag but didn't spot one. The way this koala looked so intently at me - even moving about the branches to obtain a better view of us - made me wonder whether he was an ex-patient and was therefore used to the feeding rituals at the hospital (where many of the patients receive supplemental nutrition via syringe at 8am and 3pm daily).

It was well after 3pm but this koala was definitely interested in us, and I couldn't help but wonder if I had have whipped a feed pot out of my pocket, whether he wouldn't have made his way down the trunk for a spot of arvo tea. I was still wearing my Koala Hospital t-shirt after my earlier shift at the hospital, so maybe he thought we were now coming to them! A bit of post-release care!

Bowden Sam
From broken_puzzle's gallery.

Although I couldn't spy an eartag, what I did spy was what appeared from below to be a third ear - a fur-covered skin fold growing above the koala's right shoulder. The next time I saw Cheyne I tried to describe it. Her response? "Fluffy flap? Oh, that's Bowden Sam"! I was incredulous. Fancy the chances of an animal released to the wild hanging out in the very street after which he was named!

All koalas, like people, are distinctive in some way (if you know what to look for). In Bowden Sam's case, his identifying feature was his fluffy flap. Not that that bothered him any; although, for the Koala Hospital it proved quite useful as things turned out. Normally, the procedure is for a koala to be eartagged and microchipped just before release. However, when Sam was released, it was a case of: "I thought you eartagged him??", "No, I thought you eartagged him??". So when Sam was released, he was sans eartag, which explains why I couldn't see one.

After that, we made a habit of taking walks past that tree; we even modified our trips into town, creeping along Bowden Road in the car so as to "check on" Sam. It was always satisfying when he was there in 'his' tree, and more than a little nervewracking when he wasn't. Like any normal koala he would have several trees he called home in his home range. I wondered whether there were other avid Sam-watchers like us who worried about where he was when he wasn't in the tree they called 'his' tree.

Then our sightings of him grew less and less. Koala mating season was coming into full swing now: perhaps, we reasoned, Sam was off seeking out mates. We had harboured a secret hope that that carousing "Bonky Bill" we saw and heard in the clutch of bush reserve at the back of our place (although too far away to identify) was 'our' Bowden Sam gettin' jiggy wit' some koala sheila.

Over the ensuing months, I got busy with other things so it was a while between visits to the Koala Hospital. Then, just the other day, I dropped into the hospital where I was delighted by the likes of Barb's little homecare joey, Settlement Point Bea. While there, I flicked throught the daybook where I discovered the reason Sam sightings had dried up was that he had been back at the hospital! And he had been attacked by a dog. Oh no, poor Sam! (Fortunately, he had been successfully patched up and released only the day before my visit.)

Here was where his fluffy flap had come in handy. Without a tag to identify him as a former paitent, this koala was, to all intents and purposes, a new admission. Yet according to the staff at the hospital, they had him sitting on the treatment room table and were scratching their heads as to why the koala was taking fluids so readily and looking around like he owned the place (I hadn’t been feeding him on the sly, honestly!). When they had a good look at him and saw the fluffy flap above his right shoulder, they recalled the koala-with-the-fluffy-flap but not his name. Other hospital staff were contacted who could remember the fluffy bit too, but not the name of the koala. Then they leafed through some earlier admission data, saw Bowden Sam's name, and it rung a bell. When they dug out Bowden Sam's chart, voila! There is was in black and white: fluffy tag on right shoulder but hadn’t been eartagged. Sam's fluff flap saves the day. His identify was doubly confirmed when they re-ultrasounded him and the photo was a facsimile of the previous one taken of Sam during his last visit. This time when Sam was released, they made extra sure he was eartagged and microchipped. He’s now out in the wild again.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Sam's re-admission was where he had been found when he was rescued after the dog attack. He was picked up in Oxide Street (point B) - on the other side of Port from Bowden Road (point A).


Image courtesy of Google Maps Australia.
It amazed me just how far Sam had tarried from away from his eponymous Bowden Road. According to Google Maps, it's an hour or more by foot (although Sam would have travelled from A to B by foot and tree, as well as heading more 'as the crow flies' - straight through the reserve, then over a number of roads and across the not insubstantial Kooloonbung Creek) to reach Oxide Street near the Oxley Highway.

This is either a testament to the breadth of a koala's particular home range, or an indictment on the effects of habitat loss and urbanisation that Sam was forced to seek a mate so far afield. There is an interesting article, "Why Habitat Is So Important", exploring this very topic in December's hot-off-the-press Gum Tips newsletter if you'd like to know more.

So this explained why we hadn't seen Sam in a while - he'd been in the hospital and before that, he taken up digs far away from 'home'. I'd like to say I've seen Sam in his usual tree again since his release, but I haven't. He has been sighted only recently however, over near the TAFE - about half way between Bowden Road and Oxide Street. I must pay him visit some time!

The noise you never forget

Koala habitat - our backyard
From koalawrangler's gallery.
Just after my partner and I had turned in for the night, a curious sound had us sitting bolt upright in the bed.

"What is it?"
"I don't know!"
"It sounds like..."
"It could be..."
"...a koala!

We jumped out of bed and ran outside. It was a koala mating call, all right. But we realised the noise wasn't coming from directly outside the room (which is how it sounded), but was actually issuing from a cluster of tall gums in the reserve beyond our neighbour's house (between the pine and the pink flowering tree in the above photo). "On a still night", the Qld government site reminds us, "the call can be heard almost a kilometre away".

What sounded at first like one koala quickly became two as the jittery "eeh eeh" of the female joined forces with the alien grunt-snort of the male. (You can hear the sounds I'm talking about on this video - not sure where it was taken.

It should have come as no surprise to a seasoned koalawrangler. The NSW government fact sheet on koalas tells us:

"This usually happens between September and January, when the trees ring with a wide range of mating noises. Koala mating songs range from the pig-like grunts and growls of the males, to the high pitched trembling sounds of the females."

Bonny and Blaze
From broken_puzzle's gallery.

Of course, I'd heard the sound many times at the hospital as males in the close confines of ICU assert their macho prowess (it was often accompanied by trashing their unit); but until we moved to a part of Port Macquarie with that is surrounded by protected habitat, the pleasure of having our sleep disturbed by these night-time rituals was denied us.

So we stood outside in our jammies listening to this grunting and eeh-eeh!-ing gradually decrease. Then we returned to bed. Little did we realise that this was not the last we'd heard of it, however; the trees continued to ring with the male koala song throughout the night...every hour, it seemed!

I wonder what this is what we have to look forward to at our new address? If more joeys are the result of such a cacophony, I'm all for it.

There are many wild koalas available for adoption here including Hospital resident koala Bonny Fire's joey, Bonny Blaze.