Training

To be a wildlife carer in Queensland you must have a permit, either your own, or one issued to the wildlife organisation that you are a member of. This permit has certain requirements that go with it and they are covered in the Code of Practice: Orphaned, sick or injured protected wildlife.

That's a bit of a mouthful, but it's a pretty straight forward, common sense document. One of the things it specifies is that you must have ongoing training while you are a carer. You can't just get a permit, read a book (or someones blog), then look after wildlife. You must be trained by an experienced carer who knows what they are doing.

So yesterday, Donna and I drove over to Natasja's house for the first of our training sessions. Natasja is our co-ordinator and the president of BARN. She also trained Jess and Brett when they became carers at the beginning of the year.

We knew we'd found the right place when we walked to the front gate and there was a kangaroo joey in the front yard.

The training involved, among other things, diet, assessing the animals for injuries, and recognising the different types of birds when they are chicks, something that is not always easy to do. The easiest way is usually by looking at their feet and beaks.

The little fellar sitting on my course notes below is a magpie fledgling. He's just starting to realise what his wings are for and was doing short flights of about 2 feet from one person to the other. Natasja showed us how to hold him and check him over and, as he has gapeworm, a common parasite in birds coming into care, she showed us what it looked like and I helped to treat it with some drops.



As we're mainly looking after possums at the moment, we were shown the proper way to hold a possum so that it doesn't scratch. This involves holding it around the neck and shoulders with one hand, and the base of the tail with the other. Believe me, you couldn't learn this from a book, if you get it wrong it hurts. I have cuts and scratches in my right hand to prove it. I had him by the neck okay, but didn't have my fingers around his shoulders. this allowed him to turn around slightly and dig his claws in. We don't generally need to handle Lucky and Mogwai this way as they're used to us, but a wild possum that hasn't been hand raised would be a different matter.

Around about the time we were due to leave, Matilda had to be fed. Matilda is a female joey, the one we'd seen in the front yard was a male. Matilda had been wriggling around in a pillow slip inside a cat basket next to the sofa the whole time we were there. Natasja got her out and gave her a bottle of Divetelact, and I don't think I've ever seen a human baby empty a bottle so quickly.

As we were leaving, Matilda was allowed outside for a while to get some exercise and too explore. As you can see from the picture below, she made the most of it.



If you're wondering about the height of that fence and her ability to jump over it, Donna was too. Natasja has an enclosure in her back yard with a seven foot high fence and they'll soon be going in there where they can't jump out.