Canadian Rescuers Down Under
On a recent trip to Australia, a Canadian family was involved in a rescue of the local wildlife. AnnieMary Ryan talks about an adventure within an adventure.
We were on the edge of the outback in NSW at about 7pm and it was pretty dark. As we rounded a turn, we saw that a Kangaroo had just been hit by a truck that was a mile or so ahead of us. Dead Kangaroos are quite common in that part of the world, but this one was a little different. She was in the middle of our lane and she had her head up looking straight at me. It was sort of creepy. My husband, Geoff, pulled the motor home over and went back to pull her off the road. Living in Alberta we know that dead animals in the middle of the road can cause a lot of damage.
From the motor home, I couldn’t see what he was doing back there, so I waited with our three children for the gruesome details. As he approached out of the darkness, we could see that he was wrestling with something held to his chest.
I couldn’t make sense of the scene. The adult kangaroo was way too big for him to pick up and it was almost dead anyway. Then I spotted a patch of fur and a little head popped up. I don’t know if you have ever seen a Joey up close but they have the cutest “what’s up” expression that you have ever seen.
Barely thirty seconds had passed by the time he got back there, but the mother was already dead. As he pulled her off the road, he saw a foot poke out of her pouch. He said that he felt a little sick when he thought about what damage may have been done. But he pulled the baby out anyway, and was surprised to be holding an uninjured Joey that was about 18 inches high.
Our hearts leapt. It is the most wonderful feeling to go from despair to joy in that split second of recognition. It took us a few moments to get our legs moving and then all hands were running to get a blanket and get his legs wrapped up. Geoff wrapped the blanket around him and the Joey buried his head into the folds, calming down almost immediately. Chloe jumped forward and grabbed the bundle, eyes still wide in disbelief.
Inside the camper and back on the highway, Bromlynn and Jake both took turns at holding on to our little miracle and it wasn’t long before his head was popped up looking for a pat. Thinking back now, I can’t believe what happened and how he was right at home with us, calmly looking around as if he was the house cat. Fifteen minutes earlier, he had been trying to cross the road safe and warm in his mother’s pouch.
As you would expect, the youngsters started giving him names and settled on Stu (even after Geoff called him Kangaroo Stew). They said it was after Stuart McLean from the CBC, our favorite storyteller. Here was one story we would be retelling for years to come.
Well, it turns out that they have a rescue service in Australia for instances just like this, so we called them at the very next town. Neil Morgan, from WRES, met us on a street corner in a small country town. We grudgingly gave up Stu, knowing that he is probably more suited to running with a mob of Kangaroos than trimming the grass in our backyard in Beaumont, Canada. Neil said that it was really hard to get them through customs. Though we wouldn’t have been the first ones to try it!
So now our hearts are back on the rollercoaster, full of joy knowing that we snatched Stu from the edge of death, filled with the sorrow of knowing that his mother died needlessly, and then our own joy and pain, blessed upon us by this ball of fur with the cheeky “What’s up” grin.
The Wildlife Shelter where Stu will live for the next nine months, before he is released back into the wild, has a web site www.wres.org.au and has promised to post some photos of Stu under his family name “Canada”.
The Ryans of Beaumont.