This is a blog about our experiences as relatively new wildlife carers. It's not a reference guide on how to look after animals, there's too much left unwritten in our posts for that and we don't always get it right.
Remember, wild animals belong in the wild, they don't belong to us!
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Sunday, March 23, 2008

Widdle and Puke

When I last posted I mentioned we'd got new possums, but we didn't have names for them.

Well, for the brushtail the name Clive stuck. I'm sure my cousin would be proud.

Just before we got the possums, I was reading Gerald Durrell's "My Family and other Animals". If you've ever read the book, you'll know that he once had two dogs named "Widdle" and "Puke". As there were no better suggestions the ringtails are now named Widdle and Puke.

Below are a couple of pics of the new additions to the family.




Sunday, March 2, 2008

New animals

It's been a while since I last posted here, mainly because we went away on holidays and so weren't getting any more animals in to look after.

Incidentally, while we were away, we visited Monkey World in Dorset. Monkey World is a primate rescue centre that looks after animals that have been kept illegally as pets. These are animals that could never be released into the wild again, but it's interesting to see the parallels between what we're doing with our native animals and they're doing with the apes, in as far as rehabilitation.

Anyway, today we picked up three new animals, a brushtail possum and two ringtail possums. The ringtails are in the aviary where Mogwai used to live and the brushtail, being younger, is in a cage inside.

No pictures of them yet, as we're letting them settle in at the moment. No names either, partly because we don't even know what sex the ringtails are. Again, we'll let them settle in a bit first before we have a look. The brushtail is a male, but nothing springs to mind as a suitable name yet. I have a cousin, Clive, in England who has a very simple method of naming animals. He just gives them normal, everyday, human names. He has several jack russells, two of whom are called Norman and Douglas. Perhaps we'll call the brushtail Clive, I think its namesake would appreciate that.