Aussie wildlife

[steelsporran]

You need one of these Mike

[speedbird591]

I once spent a couple of nights on Rottnest Island off Perth, locally named Rotto. There's a strange little marsupial that lives there and nowhere else called a quokka. It looks a bit like a little beaver but it hops like a wallaby. It gave the island it's name when Dutch sailors discovered it. Rottnest is dutch for rat's nest.

Normally Rotto is a day-trip and the only accommodation is for workers of The Rottnest Island Board who live in small huts on stilts with corrugated iron roofs. Each hut was surrounded by a fence with a sprung gate. My brother-in-law worked for the Island Board so we slept on his floor in his hut. The main form of amusement for the workers, after a night's drinking, was to prop the gate open and throw some bread under the hut. The quokkas were just the right height to get under the floorboards and with every hop they hit their heads on the boards sounding like somebody banging a drum in the early hours of the morning. After the quokkas have gone there's a brief respite until the sun rises and you realise that your tormentors have put bread on the corrugated iron roof as well. Have you any idea how much noise a flock of seagulls can make fighting for bread on a corrugated iron roof?

I've been woken by possums on the roof but this was much much worse

Ian

[Airspeed]

Ian, lucky they didn't put a couple of John's Tasmanian Devils under the hut! They would have caused a ruckuss.
We don't see them here, they're from "overseas"

[Airspeed]

This one is a sad tale.
We've lived here for nearly eleven years.
In that time, I've never seen a Feathertail Glider.
Went out to release the chooks for the day, and found this poor little deceased creature outside the laundry door.
I can tell you that they eat nectar and insects, and are able to glide 20 metres. They look even more beautiful alive.
They have to face many predators, including Currawongs, foxes and cats; (they don't get capital letters).
I would like to think that it went out in a blaze of glory, misjudging the wall and ending its life like Jonathon Livingston Seagull did.
Though it doesn't show external wounds, apart from a broken back leg, I fear that it was probably scampering along the ground and fell foul of a cat.