Burnt Possum

With the start of the dry season in the top end comes fires. There are fires everywhere. While on the whole the fires we have here are much much less severe than the ones they have down south wildlife will still get caught up in them and be injured. This is a little possum joey who lost him mum and burnt his feet trying to escape from the fire. Burns are nasty and can take a while to heal but his are fairly shallow so should heal. His fur is a little singed and he smells of burnt hair.

lawn Mower Frog

For those of you in Darwin might be have already heard about this one (it was in the NT news). We had a female green tree frog that got run over with a lawn mower.
The Lawn mower took the top layer of skin off and a fair amount of bruising. We anaethetised
her and stitched her up. She has recovered well and now looks great
and is ready for release.
Here is some photos of before during and immediately after the
surgery. And one photo of how she looks now.She has now been released back into the wild to hopefully live a long life.

Pygmy Goose

With the end of the wet the flood waters are disappearing rapidly. As a result many of the animals that depend on the water end up becoming more vulnerable to dogs cars and other threats. This is a green pygmy goose that was attacked by a dog. He has a large gash on his neck that we have stitched. While they are stressy birds we hope this one will make a full recovery. They tend to do better in groups so he has gone to a carers who has several others in care.

Pinky Bandicoot

This morning we had two pinky Northern Brown Bandicoots brought in. Their mother was chased by a dog. They were found scattered in some ones backyard. Two were unfortunately already dead but two are now being hand reared. You can see how small and undeveloped bandicoots are initially. A wallaby of this size would have virtually no chance of survival but bandicoots are tough and have a reasonable chance of survival.

Galah

This baby Galah's nest was accidentally destroyed when people cut down the palm trees they were living in. This Galah is the lucky one - its nestmate went through a wood chipper (and was killed) - when they found the body of that one they realised there were babies inside and this one was fortunately saved. This little fella will need to be hand reared for a few months before being able to be released.

Possum Blood Transfusion

A couple of days ago we had a very sick possum brought into us. His name is Malcolm and had been hand reared by Nina from Ninas ark. He had been gradually going down hill, been off colour. A blood test showed that he was extremely anaemic. In fact the test showed he needed a blood transfusion immediately or he would die. Now we have never done a blood transfusion on a possum before. We collected and cross matched some blood from a healthy adult donor possum and gave Malcolm some nice fresh blood. The effect was almost immediate - Malcolm went from being flat and hardly able to move to being very active and very hungry. He hasn't stopped eating since. The first photo is a before shot and you can see how sick he is. The second one is us giving Malcolm the blood and the last one is of Malcolm as he is today - full of life.

Sea Turtle

We've had another sea turtle brought in. She is another floater - a sea turtle who can't dive and bobs along the surface of the ocean. She is still in good condition and is responding very well to treatment, so we are very hopeful for her.