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Timing is everything

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

WIRES volunteer, Sara was bushwalking with friends in the Capertee Valley, a week or so ago.

On the drive home they saw a Red-necked wallaby lying in the middle of the road, bleeding. Sara says that sadly she was dead, only very recently hit by a passing vehicle.

As Sara went to check the pouch she saw two frantic little paws scrabbling around and a crying noise.

It was 3 degrees celsius and just starting to snow, so it was very lucky they had arrived on the scene and found him so quickly.

Doubly lucky says Sara, as because it was so cold and they had a long drive back to Sydney, we'd filled our drink bottles with hot water - so I made him a little incubator with a towel/cardboard box/hot water bottles.

We stopped at a cafe on the way home to get the bottle re-filled with hot water which was very kind of them. After a full check up Sara took him into care.

He now lives in a pouch with controlled heating, gets fed every 4 hours, on a special marsupial replacement milk formula - and is making very good use of all the pouch liners and knitted pouches that people so generously make and donate to WIRES. Sara says she keeps him as clean as she can so the pouch liners need to be changed fairly frequently!

He is putting on weight and will soon need to go back to a carer in an area where there are red-necked wallabies so that when the time comes for him to be released, he will be in the right place.

Find out more about kangaroos and wallabies