What're you lookin at?

We dropped in to see Natasja, our co-ordinator today. She had a couple of young ringtails for us as company for Rufus, now that Rusty is gone.

The last time we were there she had two tawny frogmouths, so I just had to photograph them this time.





Both the pictures are of the same bird. The feathers on them are so soft, and with those big expresive eyes you can't help wanting to give them a big hug.

Mogwai, the brushtail has reached the stage where wheels are in motion for him to move one. He's getting big enough and old enough to be released, so he'll be moved soon to another carer where he can be soft released.

It'll be sad to see the little guy go, we've had him since he was small enough to fit in one hand.

The snake and blue tongue both left us today. They've gone back to Jess now she's moved into another house. I didn't write much about them in this blog, mainly because they didn't really do much.

I'll post some pictures of the new ringtails, Linus and Lucy, next time I write.

Feeding time

I've mentioned before that Rufus and Rusty have different personalities and that Rufus is a lot easier to feed now that he laps from a spoon. Below are a couple of pics of them. I'll leave it up to you to decide who's who.





Unfortunately, when I got up on Wednesday morning, Rusty had died. He'd never been as exhuberant as Rufus and the night before it was harder than usual to get him to drink his milk. Even so, it was a shock to find he'd died. We're getting used to the fact that a lot of animals die in care, simply because of the stress it causes them. With Rufus though it was a bit harder to take because he was such a cute little guy.

So Rufus is alone again for the time being. Because he's spent some time with another possum his own age, it's even more important that he gets another to keep him company. It just so happens that Natasja, our co-ordinator has another one that needs to be paired up, so we'll be picking him up tomorrow.

Another mouth to feed

This is rusty. He's come to live with us to keep Rufus company.



Now you might say he looks just like Rufus, how do you tell the difference? We were worried about the same thing until we got him home. He's slightly bigger than Rufus at the moment and Rufus is a bit darker.

The easiest way to tell them apart at the moment though is when it comes to feeding time. Rufus is really easy to feed as he will lap from a teaspoon. All we have to do is trickle his formula into the spoon and he'll drink it up. It's a lot tidier that way, although you do have to wipe his chin afterwards.

Rusty on the other hand, will only drink from the teat and he's easily distracted. You pretty much have to restrain him, then drizzle the formula on his lips. Invariably, some of it misses and you end up with milk everywhere. Rusty is eating some solids though. He ate most of the leaf shoots Donna put in with them last night.

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I haven't mentioned Lucky for a while. As you can see from the picture below he's pretty much over his dermatitis, it's now just a case of waiting for the fur to grow back, oh and his whiskers.



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Unfortunately, the magpie we rescued the other day didn't make it. Looking at him afterwards it was obvious he never had a chance. He had a really bad case of gapeworm. I've mentioned gapeworm before in this blog, it's a parasite that infects the throats of birds. When it gets bad it prevents the bird swallowing and therefore it starves or chokes to death.

It's treatable with Ivermectin, but in this case the bird was too far gone to be helped by the time it came into care. It's probably why the bird was out of its nest and not being helped by the parents in the first place.

First Rescue

Today Steve and I went to a wildlife rescue (you might say wow) but it was a little rescue a little tiny magpie. Cute as anything and unsure about everything. Pity this is not a paying job I could do it all the time. So we now have a baby magpie at least until tomorrow. Speaking of tomorrow we do a swap the maggie for a baby ringtail originally we were going to hand Rufus to another carer who had a ringtail (roughly same age same weight) but there is a huge shortage of carers out there so we will after tomorrow have a mate for Rufus. We know he is another male so we hope they take to each other. How does Rufus and Rusty sound? Trying to think of names is fun.
Just like having kids only kids are more demanding. Maybe not, you feed them, wipe their mouths, clean their bottoms, and change their beds. (No not much different).

A day in the life of Rufus

You've met Rufus before. That was him on his mum's back in the previous blog entry. Unfortunately, his mum didn't survive. Whether it was from her injuries, or shock, we don't know, but little Rufus is now an orphan.

It's just something that you have to accept as a carer. As I've mentioned before in this blog, about forty per cent of birds coming into care don't survive, and that was also the case with the noisy miner from the previous post.

The noisy miner should really have been left where it was. We discovered that it was able to fly a little, so if the person that found it had just left it alone (keeping pets away of course), it would have most likely survived.

Anyway, we now have Rufus to look after and he's as cute as a button. Actually I've never been able to figure out what's cute about buttons, but there you go. Rufus is cuter than a button.

Below, I present to you, a day in the life of Rufus (actually it was only about ten minutes, it was feeding time).



Is it time to get up already?




I'll just have a quick read of all the important news.




Breakfast, or is it dinner? Hard to tell with nocturnal animals.




Some joeys start to lap their milk at an early age, luckily Rufus is one of them.




Oh, how about a bit of privacy.

If you're curious what Donna is up to in that last picture, when the joeys are in the pouch their mum licks them after feeding to get them to go to the toilet. A damp tissue is a suitable substitute.

For more pics of Rufus have a look at Donna's blog.

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Just a little note while we're on the topic of possums. I've mentioned this before and I'm going to continue to mention it, a lot of the hits on this blog are from people googling for information on looking after native animals. If you have a wild animal that you're looking after, make sure you're part of a wildlife carers organisation.

Do not try to look after wild animals if you don't know what you're doing, or don't have some kind of support network. It's not like looking after cats, dog, budgies or guinea pigs.

You can't learn it from a book or from the internet. There are some very good, very informative websites out there on caring for wildlife, but when you come across a problem with your animal, and you will, an experienced carer will usually be able to help you fix it straight away.

Rufus is a good example of the need for a network. Ringtails really need to be with their own kind as they're a lot more social than brushtails. Rufus will most likely end up with another carer from BARN that has a ringtail the same age and size as him.

Bringing your work home

Donna's working part time as a receptionist at a vet surgery. The pay isn't the best, but that's balanced out by other things. Below are pics of some of the other things.





The bird is a young Noisy Miner. Now I've got to admit that noisy miners are one of my favourite birds, despite the reason they got their name. We have two options with this little critter. As they are territorial, they need to be in a group when they're growing up, this means either we pass him (or her) on to a carer that has other noisy miners, or we take on a few more to keep it company. The jury is out on that at the moment.

The ringtail possum had her tail run over by a car. Ringtails, with their prehensile tail, rely on the tail being healthy. We're keeping an eye on her to make sure the tail is okay, and if it is she'll most likely be released within a few days. As you can see from the pic though, she's a mum. That was another concern yesterday, but seeing the littlun tonight was a big plus. Mum seems to be over the shock of her injury and is moving around more, so things are looking good for the two of them.

The big outdoors

Mogwai finally moved out into an aviary last night.

We've been meaning to move him for about a week now as he's been ready to move for a while. I removed his drey from the cage he'd been in and fixed it up in the top corner of the aviary, while he sat on my shoulder and watched.

Even though he's been in the aviary a few times over the past couple of weeks, to get him used to it, he spent a lot of time last night exploring.

He's now at the stage where he won't be getting the same contact with us as he has been. He won't come out of the aviary now until it's time to move him to his release site. He can't be released here as there are already a lot of brushtail possums in our area.

Lucky should really be in an aviary now as well, but we've held back on that because we're still treating his dermatitis.

As you can see from the picture below, he's not as good looking as Mogwai. That doesn't stop us caring about him just as much as Mogwai though.



Oh, and the fur will grow back. He won't always look like a poodle.

More new experiences

Donna started working at our local vet surgery today. Talk about bringing your work home with you, she came home with an abandoned peewee (magpie lark) nestling.

It wasn't with us for long as Jess and Brett were coming over to pick it up and look after it, but it was with us long enough to give it a bit of a feed and to go, "Ah, isn't it cute". Oh, and it crapped on Sarah.

We intend looking after birds in the future, but as we're going overseas in the new year, we don't want to get too much into it yet. That said, we would have happily looked after this little guy. There's something about shoving a tweezer full of mince and Wambaroo mix down the throat of a baby bird, that makes you realise you're making a difference in the little critters life.

I never realised before, but baby birds seem to have telescopic necks. When it was sitting there minding its own business it was about an inch tall. When it was offered food, or it thought food was forthcoming, it was about three inches tall. The neck seemed to come from nowhere.

Cyclone Mogwai

Doesn't he look cute?



If the publishers of Men's Health magazine did Possum Health magazine, Mogwai would be on the front cover.



His cuteness hides a destructive streak though.

The cage he's in has two bars at the bottom that support a tray and one of these had fallen out while the cage was being cleaned. No-one had noticed, except Mogwai. Sometime during the night he'd pushed the tray down at one corner and squeezed out the back of his cage.

Donna went downstairs to check on the possums this morning. Lucky was in his cage hissing at her when she went close. He doesn't like anyone since the washing episode.

There was no sign of the Mogster.

The door to the laundry was open, which meant he wasn't just restricted to the room he's kept in. He could be anywhere downstairs, including in one of the cars.

I wandered through the laundry and the garage to, what we call, the computer room. The light was off in there, but the computer had been left on over night, so there was a faint blue and orange glow from the various lights on the computer and all the other things plugged into it.

As soon as I turned the light on I knew he'd been in there. There were papers, lotto coupons, CD cases and pens on the floor. Papers in trays were in disarray. Ok, the computer room is usually like that anyway. What really proved he'd been there was the evidence that he'd been to the toilet while he was there, and it wasn't solid.

The mouse was hanging off the front of the desk, and I suspect he may have knocked it or stood on the keyboard, causing the monitor to suddenly come on. Imagine creeping round in the dark in a strange place and all of a sudden a huge blue light about three times your height comes on right in front of you. I'd evacuate too.

There's a window in the computer room that faces into the garage. After looking high and low in the room, I went out into the garage to see if he'd got up into the ceiling space above the room. There he was sitting on the window ledge, between the window and the curtain.

The look on his face said, "please put me back in my cage, I've had enough exploring for today".

He's back in his cage and I've got some cleaning to do.