Living in the Bush

I live in the hills of Melbourne in an area classed as the Dandenong Ranges. The landscape of this area is mostly bush, with houses scattered throughout the hills, its a beautiful place to live with lots of wildlife and at night its a very dark place to be.

The drawbacks of living in such an area are few, if you are without transport (like me) you are stuck without much face to face contact with humans and most of your communication is with the telephone or the internet.

Mostly Im quite happy and content with this, as it allows me to concentrate on what I like doing, which is knitting, but I do take breaks from this and enjoy the beautiful scenery around me.

This morning I was walking around my front garden and came across a wallaby. Now this wallaby had obviously tried to cross the road in front of my property, and had (I think) been hit by a car, it had managed to jump a few more feet but had died once it got into my garden.

Now being new at country living, I didnt know what to do, so rang my next door neighbor (ringing my neighbor is a lot quicker than going to see her) and asked what do I do? Maria my neighbor suggested that I ring the wildlife rescue people and see if they would help.

I rang the wildlife people, and the conversation sort of went like this

Me: I have a dead wallaby in my yard what should I do?

them: is it a male or female?

Me: How do I tell if its male or female?

Them: Lift its leg and look, if there are testicles its a male if none its a female. (well duh!)

Me: But its dead what difference does it make if its male or female?

Them: If its female there may be a joey in its pouch, if you see no testicles look for the pouch and see if theres a joey in the pouch......we may be able to save the joey.

Me: you want me to stick my hand into a dead animal to see if theres a baby?

them: Yes

Now I won't go into details, but needless to say it was a female and I dry retched for an hour after I did as I was requested. If I could have boiled my hand to get the germs off I would have. I didnt find any way of diposing of the animal apart from digging a big hole myself and dragging the poor wallaby into it. Well the deed has been done lets hope she now rests in peace.