Sandhill Col

Golfer is giving off a particularly gamey scent right now and I notice that his scent gland, the furry cleft in his chest, is glistening. I wonder if that’s pure parfum du koala seeping out of there?

Tractive Golfer
From koalawrangler's gallery.

Amanda must be psychic. She's written me up for yard 10, which is just where I'd like to be. I haven't wrangled up there for about six weeks. I take Tractive Golfer’s feed pot and set off, grabbing some newly sharpened clippers from the tool shed on the way. Ocean Golfer is the first koala I see as I enter the yard. He’s the one Tractive was giving a hard time when he was in yard 10z. He seems to mind less now that Ocean is on the periphery. Tractive is down on his gunyah and lets me give him a feed. There’s nothing more serene than feeding one of these animals in the morning sunlight with only the birdsong in your ears. Golfer is giving off a particularly gamey scent right now and I notice that his scent gland, the furry cleft in his chest, is glistening. I wonder if that’s pure parfum du koala seeping out of there?

Ocean Golfer
From koalawrangler's gallery.

It’s getting confusing with all the golfers in here. There are also a number of “Oceans” at the hospital too, courtesy of Ocean Drive, a main road nearby. Cheyne comes in to give Ocean Golfer some medication. He looks like he’s doing well in here. He’s a round little fellow who clearly likes his food. I hear him rustling around in his leaf a bit, searching out a choice bit of yesterday’s leaf.

I mention to Cheyne that I noticed our old friend Links Lorna had been in the hospital during the week. She was the koala I first heard make an “eeping” noise whenever she was a bit miffed. Unfortunately, she had become debilitated since her release, losing two kilos which is a significant amount for a koala of Lorna’s size. Cheyne said she looked just like O’Briens Fiona had—scrawny and unwell—before they decided it would be best to euthanase her. Now that I’ve been a koalawrangler for over six months, I’m more aware of those koalas I’ve met with early on coming in for repeat visits. It’s the nature of living with what they call an urban koala population. Having said that, we get older koalas in who’ve gone through most of their lives in Port Macquarie without ever needing to pay us a visit.

Sandhill Col
From koalawrangler's gallery.

Sandhill Col is another koala who could use some more meat on his bones. He’s not an old koala but he has a grizzled look about him that makes him seem older than his years. He suffers from conjunctivitis and has recently been moved outside. His fur is darker than most, which is often a barometer on illness, similar to the way Anna Bay Miles’s used to be before he made a 180 degree improvement and lighter patches started coming through. Like all the koalas that graduate to the outdoors, Col looks a lot happier in the sunlight. He’s also eating up his leaf so I make sure to prepare him some juicy big bunches.

Anna Bay Lil (or Bill)
From koalawrangler's gallery.

Jackie is just finishing off ICU. There is a new little joey in ICU who’s a real cutie (aren’t they all?). At present, it’s unsure whether Anna Bay Lil is Lil or Bill until we get definitive tests back. S/he is snuggled in the leaf when I peer in. He’s being strictly dehumanised to prepare him for life in the wild again.

One-eyed Herschel Grady and Hamlyn Jack with conjunctivitis are both still in ICU. There’s a newcomer, a motor vehicle accident victim. Ocean Jane was hit by a car on Ocean Drive. The poor chap who hit her put her straight in his car and brought her in to the hospital, making sure to visit her again that afternoon. Amanda asks me to feed her and as I enter she turns the sweetest face towards me. She has a bit of a mucous problem, her right nostril gummed up with snot. She has difficulty swallowing so I ease the syringe into her mouth and take it slow. She’s interested enough, but can only lap slowly. She drinks more than three quarters of the pot in this fashion until she produces a snorty gargle in her throat signals she wants no more.

Ocean Jane
From koalawrangler's gallery.

I promise Jackie I’ll mop ICU when she’s done and flick through the day book while I’m waiting. Barton Glen has been released! I feel a special simpatico for the ones I’ve wrangled up close. Good for Barton Glen.

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

Sooty's Smudge

Staring at Anna Bay Sooty's pouch, I feel a bit like a papparazzi photographer waiting for the latest celebrity to emerge outside of the London restaurant or nightclub du jour...not knowing whether I would be waiting a minute or an hour...

Smudge
From koalawrangler's gallery.

It's most of the usual suspects on the Thursday shift: Amanda, Jarred, Brooke; although Trish and Paul couldn't make it in.

I'm given a choice between yard 10 or two of the yards nearest to ICU. It's no contest really: one of the two yards contains Anna Bay Sooty, and Anna Bay Sooty contains a precious little joey called Smudge. At least, that's what we call him/her as in my house; you know, like a smudge of soot.

My other koala is Livingstone Clover, a big boy who spends most of his time high in the tree in yard 4. He's got a limp on him like Innes Wonga used to, but he's surprisingly agile, even for a big boy. It's easy doing his yard since he's up on yonder branch.

Livingstone Clover
From koalawrangler's gallery.

It's all coming back to me, this koalawrangling stuff. Chuck the recycled pot, divide up yesterday's leaf and trim it back. I'm reminded of an ikebana presentation I saw in Kyoto. A kimono-clad Japanese lady kneeled on stage carefully examining different branches of fern which she then assembled in a pot. Occasionally, she'd pause and take up a pair of clippers to trim a stem before placing it precisely in the vase. It was such a serene, careful presentation, yet ridiculously all I could think about was how similar it was, in a paraodic sort of way, to cutting koala leaf. The process was just the same, minus loud bird call, the eucalyptus aroma, the splash of hose water. Oh, and we used hedge clippers as long as your arm.

Cheyne sticks her head over the fence to ask if I'll prepare yard 2 for Barton Glen, a koala transferring from ICU. So I set about sorting out the pots and filling the water bowl. When I'm done, Cheyne reappears looking for Amanda who's not in the vicinity, so she asks me those magic words: "want some handling practice?"

Eep.

I can't really go around calling myself the koalawrangler when the most of I've wrangled lately is our kitten. (Although, kitten-wrangling, like cat-herding with which it is closely related, is not an activity for the faint of heart).

So I roll up my sleeves literally and figuratively and head into ICU. Cheyne hands me a bag and points me in the direction of Barton Glen's unit. I'm horizontally challenged so she drags up a stool for me to stand on. But that's where her assistance ends. I'm doing this on my own. I tell her she's terribly mean, but of course I know that this is as it should be: how else am I going to get good at koalawrangling if I always look to a more experienced wrangler to take over? What good would I be if called upon in a rescue sitation?

But I haven't bagged a koala for a while so Cheyne does give me a tip upfront. "Just drop the bag over him like he's a bell." I do this and then Barton reacts as though in slow motion, trying to shift out from under the bag, but not at any kind of great speed. I go for his wrists under the bag and Cheyne says, no, it's better to try to topple him into the bag rather than use the bag as a means of picking him up.

Barton Glen
From koalawrangler's gallery.

It all happens quite fast after that and suddenly Barton's in the bag and I'm gripping it securely around the neck (the bag, that is, not the koala!). I carry him triumphantly into ICU for the next round: tagging and chipping. I hold the bag open just enough to allow his head to poke out, but ensure that he can't move while Cheyne tags his ear. Next, it's the patch at the back of his neck and down his back that is left uncovered so that the microchip can be inserted.

I reclose the bag and carry Barton Glen out to his interim home, yard 2. I put the bag down gently and ease it open to let him crawl out. He looks around, blinking, as they all do when we do the hey-presto! unit/yard swap. But he regains his composure and hightails it up onto the gunyah and tucks into the leaf I've prepared for him. There's a group of visitors who are delighted by his appearance and crowd around to watch him acclimatising to his new environs.

Smudge's tiny tiny paw
From koalawrangler's gallery.

But Glen's is nothing like the crowd generated by our littlest resident, Smudge [not his/her real name!], Anna Bay Sooty's little joey. After weeks of only seeing nothing more than Anna Bay Sooty's burgeoning pouch or, on occasion, a tantalising paw, we're now being treated to the appearance of the joey itself. It's still too little to completely leave the pouch (or perhaps the weather's just too darn cold!), but lately we've been treated to the exquisite sight of Smudge's little face cradled in Anna Bay Sooty's arms (and scary claws!). I've also seen Smudge do a complete about-face, wiggling its tiny white fist-sized bottom in the air as it's tried to find a more comfortable position. Sometimes we would stand for 30 minutes at a time in Anna Bay Sooty's yard staring at the sleeping mother, willing the baby to come out for us to ogle it.

Pensive Smudge
From broken_puzzle's gallery.

Staring at Anna Bay Sooty's pouch, I feel a bit like a papparazzi photographer waiting for the latest celebrity to emerge outside of the London restaurant or nightclub du jour...not knowing whether I'll be waiting a minute or an hour... Then, as we all stood there, vollies and visitors alike, John came in to spray the leaf and lo and behold, Smudge emerges in all its glory and sits looking up at us for what seems like ages. It's a precious moment, made all the more special by the news that they will soon be leaving us to return to their home down south in Anna Bay.

Smiling Smudge
From koalawrangler's gallery.

There are more photos of "Smudge" here:

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

From chocolate koalas to the real thing

I've been overseas for a couple of weeks so the closest I've come to koalas has been the chocolate-filled kind we scoffed plenty of in Japan. The biscuits were ubiquitous at train station shops so we stocked up on them for long rides on shinkansen. One time I couldn't see them at the counter so I flapped my hands at my ears while saying "koala" in my best Japanese accent. Amazingly, the lady knew exactly what I meant. Saying "koala" alone would probably have sufficed, but then I wouldn't have given all those other people on the train platform a demonstration of a koalawrangler on holiday. (The bikkies are called Koala's March, by the way,and each packet contains up to 17 different koala designs. Importantly, they donate part of their profits to the Australian Koala Foundation).

Koala biscuits
From koalawrangler’s gallery.

Now I'm back at the Koala Hospital with the real, inedible kind of koala, and I realise how much I've missed them! There have been visits from old koala patients since I've been gone, some positive, some not so positive: Newport Bridge Gloria, one of the koalas successfully treated under the Sydney University drug trials, was picked up wandering around an auto parts place near the highway. She was checked out and returned to a safe, more koala-friendly place. Calwalla Bill was also brought in for a check-up. He's the one who gave one of the vollies a swipe in ICU when he was last in. He's one of those koalas with a slightly grubby-coloured bottom. The hospital sometimes gets calls about about him from savvy Port Macquarie residents who know a bit about wet-bottom and think they've come across a new sufferer. He turned out to be fine and was sent on his way.

Other koalas revisiting us didn't fare so well. Innes Wonga, who had a gammy knee like our current resident Livingstone Clover, was found limping and died on arrival, as did Koalasaurus Inches. Little Cathie John, one of the joeys being raised by her dedicated homecare Mum also passed away. Before I went away, Judy told me that he had developed an infection and was being seen to by the vet. When I saw that his name was off the homecare board, I feared that he might not have pulled through. A part of the problem was that never quite There are more optimistic stories too: Oxley Sooney came in with a limp, was treated and released. Hastings Teal was admitted and then relocated to a safer area.

Candelo Cool
From broken_puzzle's gallery.

Candelo Cool's still with us. She had a return to ICU for a bit because of heavy rains (where Emma caught her lounging around on her gunyah!), but now she's back outside in the sunshine in yard 10. Ocean Golfer, the other Golfer's (Tractive) masculine competition, is still recovering in yard 10.

The flamboyantly named one-eyed Herschel Grady is the current wet-bottom in ICU. Barton Glen is in ICU with conjunctivitis. There's also Jonas Absalom Blinky who has conjunctivitis and who tumbled into a residential swimming pool.

Of course, the highlight of the hospital right now is Anna Bay Sooty who has newfound celebrity status. When Sooty came to us, she was placed in an outdoor aviary where she proved to be very skittish. She shied away from human contact, usually burying herself in her leaf when handlers were cleaning her unit. We soon discovered that Sooty was hiding more than herself away; she was also hiding a rather special secret. She was carrying a pinkie, the name given to an unfurred joey that lives in its mother’s pouch until it matures and is ready to face the world.

Anna Bay Sooty with poking joey paw
From koalawrangler’s gallery.

Sooty gradually got more used to being in hospital care, submitting to special eye ointments and medication that the hospital staff were using to treat Sooty’s eye complaint. Sometimes one way of treating conjunctivitis in koalas is to operate to remove the third eyelid. There is a special risk attached to this when the koala is carrying a pinkie since the anaesthetic used in the operation may cause the mother to reject the baby. If Sooty rejected her pinkie from the pouch, there is a chance it could die. The hospital is lucky enough to have a humidicrib which can be used to keep pinkies warm in the event of this, but this is no substitute for its own mother’s pouch. And I have it on good authority (Cheyne)that koala pinkies are very difficult to hand-raise.

Luckily, the pinkie remained where it was. Soon, hospital staff were delighted to see the size of Sooty’s pouch increasing and even some movement beneath her fur. Today, we were lucky enough to see a miniature koala hand poking out!

Anna Bay Sooty's joey
From broken_puzzle's gallery.
Over the last few weeks, visitors and vollies alike have been treated to the incomparable joy of seeing the now furred joey’s little face protruding from its mother’s pouch blinking up at the delighted, smiling human faces. It’s a joy having see this young one graduate from hidden pinkie to visible joey in such a seemingly short time. (The joey looks like it's wearing a fur-lined anorak in this photo, like Kenny from South Park!)


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

No Clover allowed on Golfer's turf

It's a case of marsupial West Side Story except instead of the Jets and the Sharks, it's the Koalas and...well...the Koalas.

Candelo Cool
From koalawrangler's gallery.

Brrr! It's a chilly old morning here in Koalaville. All the koalawranglers arrived rugged up in long trousers, fleecy tops and scarves. Even Cheyne has forgone her customary shorts for more winter-friendly attire. It's times like these you've got to envy those among us with built-in fur coats.

I see that the koala money boxes are still stacked on the dayroom table so busy myself with scattering them around the yards. On my way through yard 9, Bonny is up her usual tree while Birthday Girl looks at me beseechingly for her tucker. Wiruna Lucky hasn't been playing nicely with the other girls, so they've given her a yard to herself--9a, the former joey lovenest. She's perched up in the tree and illuminated by yellow morning light. She looks enormous in the yard that has been joey territory for so long. Ocean Kim has recently joined Lake Christmas in the traditional joey yard (yard 6).


Wiruna Lucky
From koalawrangler's gallery.
Amanda is still reading leaf in yard 5. She returns to the dayroom after her rounds and begins allocating yards. Kerstin's up in yard 10 where only Candelo Cool and Tractive Golfer reside; Brooke's in yard 9, Paul's in yards 5 and 6 and I'm in 3 and 4. Jarrod is helping Geoff with some maintenance work in ICU. The walls in ICU have all received a fresh lick of paint. The bright eggshell blue is quite a change after the previously dour grey.

Jackie is tending to her two charges in ICU: Sandhill Col, a koala brought in with Chlamydia in both eyes. When he turns from yesterday's leaf, he peers out at me through eyes that are angry red. He's slated for surgery tomorrow, so we'll see how he fares. Another inmate is Cattlebrook John. I remember his name. He was brought in back in February with symptoms of lethargy. I remember Barb conjecturing at the time that he might have been hit by a car. He spent a few days in ICU and things didn't look too hopeful. Then, miraculously, he seemed to perk up and was released. It's thought that a motor vehicle accident is to blame for his admission this time as well. He appears to be concussed, but he also has an infection which we're waiting on bloods to confirm.

Cattlebrook John
From koalawrangler's gallery.

I've got Anna Bay Sooty and Livingstone Clover to look after out in the yards. Neither gets any formula, so it's straight onto poop and leaf detail. I start on Clover who's currently up the tree in yard 4. I attended the hospital's 3pm walk-and-talk on Sunday, so was able to catch up on a little bit of history about Clover from Barb.

Clover was brought in suffering from a gammy knee and after his initial stint in ICU was moved to the circular yard in yard 10. You'd think that and old man like Tractive Golfer who suffers from a few mobility problems himself would be sympathetic to the likes of poor old Clover. But no. Golfer has the run of the place in yard 10 and is generally not too bothered when other koalas are assigned to the smaller yards adjacent to his. He also tends to ignore it when koalas are placed in the circular yard within yard 10. That is, as long as they are FEMALE koalas. Golfer was none too pleased about the presence of Clover. Males koalas can be quite bullish about their home range and like to be king of their little stretch of "jungle".

Golfer even decided he wanted to explain the home-range rules to Clover in person: one morning the handlers found Golfer IN Clover's yard. Despite suffering from rather pronounced spinal curvature (thanks to his scoliosis), Golfer managed to scale the metal fence into Clover's yard and was giving him a bit of a hard time about being the new kid on the block in Golfer's turf. It's a case of marsupial West Side Story except instead of the Jets and the Sharks, it's the Koalas and...well...the Koalas.

The powers that be decided the best for Clover's recuperation would be to get him off Golfer's radar. Despite shipping Clover out, Golfer still broke his way into Clover's old yard this morning. Amanda found him in there wandering about, no doubt ensuring there were no more interlopers.

So Clover's yard's an easy one to clean, with Clover sleeping peacefully on high. Amanda asks me to look after Kempsey too. She's pacing up and down her gunyah wanting her formula, so I duck into the dayroom to get her food. Feeding her draws a crowd of interested visitors. I lure her down the visitor-friendly end with the smell of formula. She laps it up in her methodically dribbly way.


Kempsey Carolina
From koalawrangler's gallery.
I carry on and prepare her leaf. Kempsey's hungry today. I put her full pots in place and Kempsey weaves in and out of the branches looking for the choicest leaf. She starts backing her way down the gunyah until it looks like she's going to slip of the end. I put my cupped hands gently around her white bottom just as she taks a step too far... She works it out though and changes out of reverse gear. For a blind koala, she's pretty savvy.


Anna Bay Sooty
From koalawrangler's gallery.
Kerstin's finished in yard 10 and comes in to see if she can help out. I've cleaned Clover's yard; all the remains is to replenish his fresh leaf which she's happy to do. I continue on with Anna Bay Sooty who's been asleep all morning. I notice a large brown patch on her hind quarters. I wonder if it's a bit of joey poking out of her pouch? I catch Cheyne in the yard and she suggests it could be "her pap coming through". Pap is a type of koala poo that the mother produces for the baby koala to eat, much like colostrum in humans. It contains all the right ingredients for preparing the joey's gut for its impending eucalyptus diet.

We go into Sooty's yard to inspect more closely, but it turns out to be nothing more than a brown patch of fur that I hadn't noticed before. Cheyne says it's characteristic of darker-furred koalas to have such patches. They also tend to have brown claws; they go hand in hand, a bit like brown hair/brown eyes in humans.

Well, it may not have been a sign of the forthcoming joey, but Sooty's pouch has certainly grown hefty in the last few weeks. As I move her leaf pots around and she moves to accommodate them, I can see the hanging roundness of her belly. It's a shame, but we won't get to see Sooty's little one. Sooty's ready to be released in the next week or two, and that's not to be delayed by a certain koalawrangler's desire to see a freshly hatched joey in the flesh.

There are some serious mating-style noises emanating from ICU. The maintenance team are in there tinkering down the sink end of the corridor. Every once in a while Cattlebrook John lets loose with their unique growling sound, a koala-style foghorn.

In the dayroom, I flick through the daybook and see there's been a few comings and goings. Emerald Oz was briefly admitted and then released, having been reported on a fence with barking bull terriers. Hassall Coal was also on a fence, this time in a yard with two Staffordshire terriors. She was relocated to a safer area. There was also Airport Keena, a juvenile found up in the rafters of a freight hanger at the airport who was also relocated.

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

Too cool for school

Most koalas in my experience drink draughts of the formula, taking time to swallow in between; they even lose interest and chew on their leaf until they're reminded that there's formula in the offing. Not this one. It's like she's skolling a beer, with no time for breathing, swallowing or otherwise.

Candelo Cool
From koalawrangler's gallery.

It's my birthmas today! I've been looking forward to spending the morning with the koalas and my koala friends. Today there's Jarrod, Paul, Tricia, Brooke, and Amanda, of course; Lorraine is doing admin and Cheyne is out of the hospital attending a course. I'm in yard 10, which has only three koalas: the usual Tractive Golfer, the recovering Candelo Cool and ageing Wiruna Lucky, lately moved from yard 9 to the circular yard 10z.

The supervisor is heading up to yard 10 to administer Candelo Cool's medication so I follow her up with Cool's feed-pot. I've not had much to do with her. She was in ICU and then shifted to yard 10, where I haven't wrangled for a few shifts. I expect her to exhibit the reticence that's more usual in recent admissions. We had a feeding refresher course a few weeks back and Cheyne talked about how we should try to minimise syringe biteage--it's not good for the koala to gnaw off the syringe tip. Till now I'd never quite experienced this kind of feeding exuberance. I'm holding the feed pot out before me to stop her from grabbing at me with her claw for a branch-like thing to cling on to. What's more curious is how eager she to suck the syringe dry. She practically eats my arm off, she loves her formula so much. She gulps insistently at the syringe and it's all I can manage to keep her from chewing the syringe in half! Most koalas in my experience drink draughts of the formula, taking time to swallow in between; they even lose interest and chew on their leaf until they're reminded that there's formula in the offing. Not this one. It's like she's skolling a beer, with no time for breathing, swallowing or otherwise. She's one Cool customer, alright.

After the feed, Cool settles down quietly and goes to sleep in the sun. Meanwhile, I'm exhausted, feeling like a fuel pump attendant working double time.

Amanda and Brooke have come into yard 10 to check on Wiruna Lucky's cheek pad. Amanda had noticed the swelling in Lucky's cheek during her rounds this morning and thought it might be more easily budged with a bit of formula lubrication. She calls me over and upon inspection I see that there's certainly a bulge there. It looks like Lucky's got a big gumdrop in her cheek. Amanda asks me to squirt the formula in while she massages the lump towards the front of her mouth. The formula does the trick and we can see the mashed leaf moving to the front of her mouth. She swallows a chunk of it, but a large ball of it drops out and onto the ground. It's a vivid green mulch and looks rather like a pesto. It's a shame she's gone to all the trouble of chewing it down only to waste it.


Tractive Golfer
From koalawrangler's gallery.
Amanda's brought up Golfer's food so I head over to feed him. He and Cool couldn't be more different. He slurps the formula gradually, pausing to swallow between mouthfuls. After the food's gone, he turns tail and heads up his tree to oversee the yard. The leaf is already available for cutting so it's possible to service the yards old-school--ie, complete one yard fully before progressing to the next. It's the ideal koalawrangling situation which was never possible when there were 30 koalas to locate leaf for.


Wiruna Lucky
From koalawrangler's gallery.
Wiruna Lucky is prowling around her yard. It's funny seeing her up here in such a small space. I'm used to seeing her on the seeming acreage of yard 9. She doesn't seem too bothered, at least she can find her water more easily now. I prepare her leaf and Lucky snuffles around in it in search for the choice bits. She finds the swamp mahogany and focuses solely on nibbling that for a few minutes, chewing the spindly nubs of seed pods instead of the leaf itself.

As I leave the yard with my tools, I see Jackie watering the plants. She's getting over a dreadful cold so it's lucky there's only one koala in ICU today: Livingstone Clover, in with a hind-leg injury.

Back in the dayroom the others are congregating. We've all finished our shifts and it's only 10am. I start washing the feed-pots until Lorraine comes and whispers in my ear that I should sit down. I sense what's coming. Amanda emerges from the office with a candle-covered cake...for me!!! It's chocolate cake with the secret ingredient of one beetroot!

Afterwards, I check out the daybook to see what's been happening during the week. Park Tricia, a koala with a joey, was admitted and then shortly released. Regatta Lanaye was found on a fence with dogs nearby and relocated to a safer place. Hay Billy is another koala that was relocated. Rushcutter Ralph was also brought in, but his wet-bottom was found to be too far advanced for him to survive so he was painlessly euthanased.

Jupiter Cheryl is slated for release today. Amanda is going to drop her off over Lighthouse Beach way on the way home.

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