I had a call regarding a brushtail possum that appeared to be living in a public toilet block.
The concerning thing about the possum was that it was active during the day, coming down to greet anyone who entered the toilets by reaching her paw out towards them (assuming asking for food). Upon leaving the toilets again, patrons would often get a little tap on the shoulder or the possum would scoot down on the ground and touch their shoes with her nose.
Now possums should be sleeping during the day and active at night, leaving their sleeping quarters to forage for food in trees. They should also be wary of people. This poor possum was doing the exact opposite of what normal healthy possums should do. We believe that perhaps she had been hand raised by a person, tamed and humanised. Probably fed during the daytime not at night as she should have been, and used to being handled and given her food by hand, not taught to forage, so not wary of people at all. She had then been released and had made her home at a place with high foot traffic and commenced to begging every passer-by for food.
I went out to assess her. As I entered the building, there she was as described, sitting above the door and coming down to curiously greet me. She seemed very healthy so what should I do? Leave her? I called the experts. Upon consultation with a wildlife carer it was decided that although she seemed to be surviving ok (although not acting as a possum should), she was in danger by humans.
It was a matter of time before someone else caught her and they may not have good intentions. Whether it was someone who wanted to harm her for their cruel entertainment, or whether it was a pest controller called out by council after someone reported that she posed a threat to people entering and leaving the toilets, or even someone who might want to make a pet out of her. We didn't think any of the above scenarios would end well for her.
I came armed with a banana which I
I had a call recently to rescue a baby echidna. This one though had me shaking my head in wonder. Why? The baby was discovered on the 3rd floor balcony of a hotel.
I rushed straight there and was taken to the balcony not sure what to expect. The little echidna rushed towards me and climbed onto my lap! Very unusual behaviour for these usually timid creatures.
It didn't take long to find out that it had been living in the apartment next door to the one where it was found, being kept as a pet, and had escaped climbing over the railing from one balcony to the next. Very lucky it hadn't climbed over the front of the balcony and fallen to the ground 3 storeys below. It would have unlikely survived.
Found in the wild covered in ticks, the finder had initially done the right thing and helped the poor echidna by removing the ticks. But instead of returning to the wild to its parents where it was found, or taking to a vet or a registered wildlife carer, they kept it.
Besides the fact that it is illegal to take native wildlife from the wild and keep as a pet, we found the echidna not only underweight and hungry, but unnaturally tame and friendly.
The Wildlife Carer we arranged for it to go to commented that 'the poor thing doesn't know what it is' and now has the difficult task of trying to teach it to be wild again and to be wary of humans, otherwise it will be unable to be released again and at risk of possibly having to be euthanised. As she has another slightly older echidna currently in care that the little one has been placed with, we are hoping the older animal will help show the little one what it actually is.
I had a call from a local council with a report of a large goanna outside a suburban primary school.
Goannas aren't usually seen around here so I hurried to the location to see what was going on. After a little while I spotted the 2 metre lizard in a tree. It was a lace monitor. Native to Australia but not common around suburban Melbourne. Was either an escaped pet; a wild one that had been caught and released; or a wild one that had somehow found itself here after following a wildlife corridor or even train tracks from where it was from.
Now lace monitors can be quite dangerous with a nasty bite that would require immediate medical attention. It had found a nice bushy part of the school but there was a risk if a child got between it and a tree and it felt threatened, that it could cause damage to the child.
We didn't want a child to be hurt nor this magnificent creature so we had to contain it and relocate it asap.
It had found itself a nice tall tree to hide in, and although it came down a couple of times it was very wary of me, and each time I attempted to catch it, it quickly raced back up the tree. I needed to call in the professionals so phoned up the team from Reptiles Victoria .
They were amazing and within minutes had co-ordinated a plan with a professional rescuer and the school so that they could be on site, clear of children asap. They attended and contained the lace monitor safely. Apparently he was quite fiesty and rather than shy away, lunged at the rescuer in defiance, but thankfully with his experience was able to catch safely.
After a vet check it will be released in a more appropriate place as they are confident came from the wild and not a pet .
We had a call this week about a home that had a little wood duck family appear about 3 weeks ago in their swimming pool. As it is quite normal for wild ducks to nest in backyards (especially those with swimming pools) then seem to magically appear one morning with their newly hatched ducklings as the residents had been oblivious to them having been sitting on a nest there the whole time, this was not unusual to hear. What was unusual about this instance, is that the duck family (mum, dad and 7 ducklings) had not left, but were still there 3 weeks later.
The parent ducks would take it in turns to look after their babies throughout the day as one parent flew off. I asked the usual questions when I got the call - was there access for the ducks to be able to leave by foot from the yard or were they trapped in it as even though parents could fly, ducklings would need to be able to walk out. Yes they could leave and would take their babies off for periods each day as were many gaps under the fence, only to return again later. There was plenty of natural food for them on the property and when looking up where the nearest creek/lake was, found it was just over 2km away.
So why not just let them stay and leave once babies could fly? There were 2 main issues. One there was a terrier dog on the property who instinctively wanted to hunt the ducks so was causing quite a bit of stress for its owners to try to keep it away from the ducks day and night.
The second issue was that the swimming pool was the duck's only water source. The owners had temporarily stopped putting salt and chlorine into the pool, but the water had turned green and with the weather warming up, they wanted to be able to use their own swimming pool, so had just put a high dose chlorine ''shock' into the pool to turn the water back to clear and also in the hope that the ducks would leave once and for all.
But they didn't. They stayed, continuing to swim and drink the heavily chlorinated wate
I was called out tonight to an urgent rescue of a fledgling raven hanging upside down, stuck with its leg caught high up in a tree.
The report was made by a neighbour of the house that the tree was in just before 5pm. The tree was in the front yard of the house adjacent to the footpath so clearly visible to both passing foot as well as vehicle traffic.
When I arrived I spotted the struggling bird immediately and was relieved that it appeared to have righted itself, though was still trapped by its leg that was somehow wedged between some branches. As I watched it kept flapping around trying to get free but was unable to. It's wings were shredded from its attempts to escape making it look more like a bat than a raven. As it was too high up for my ladder to reach the fire brigade were called and luckily they were currently available so agreed to attend.
As I waited for them, numerous groups of trick or treaters walked past as it was Halloween, with several curious as to what I was doing there. I pointed up to the raven flapping around in vain and explained I was waiting for the fire brigade who were going to help me get the bird down.
Two different children then commented that they had noticed the raven up there that morning as they walked to school and had seen it was trapped. Yet nobody had reported it until nearly 5pm tonight. That's over 8 hours later.
No wonder his wings were shredded, I just hoped there wasn't more serious damage as the wings would grow back in time.
The fire brigade turned up and as per usual they were amazing, getting him down with their rescue equipment fairly quickly.
To my dismay upon assessing the young bird, I found one of his legs had completely snapped with a bone sticking out, and there were extensive injuries right up to the hip socket.
From spending the entire day struggling to free himself he had caused irreparable damage to his leg that he would be unable to recover fully from. If only someone had have called it in
This majestic, gentle ibis, minding its own business as it forages in a local lake for food, had an arrow through its body this time last week.
Miraculously there was no major damage with the arrow missing organs, muscles and bone, so the ibis is able to move and even fly without any issues. Now arrow free (though if you watch this footage you can clearly see where it entered and exited its body) although appearing unscathed, I am visiting it where it lives with its flock every day or two to ensure it continues to recover well.
In the back or probably actually the front of my mind is the concern that whoever decided to shoot the arrow at the bird to begin with, may try again.
The truly worrying thing is that the ibis lives in a very family oriented park in Ringwood North. There is a large playground, BBQ area, with lots of children running around enjoying the beautiful park each time I have been there. Yesterday there were several families picnicking there, it always seems quite busy. The wildlife there (ducks, ibis and various other species of bird) all live in harmony and seem used to the children running around and not bothered by them.
Someone may have seen something or if anyone sees someone in the future causing harm to the wildlife, please contact either police or Wildlife Victoria immediately to report it. It is a criminal offence to maim or kill wildlife not to mention dangerous to the people in the vicinity of where arrows are being fired….
We had the privilege this afternoon of being able to release the little corella that we recently had cut free from being entangled in a basketball net. After a full recovery she was clearly very happy to be back home!
