JIMMY, A TRUE SURVIVOR

I had been looking after possums of all sizes for a few years and enjoying it but never feeling quite confident enough to take on a kangaroo joey.  Sue talked me into taking my first joey, giving me lots of support.  How my life changed! It was just like going back to when my children were babies.  Three to four hourly feeds, up in the night for 2 am feed, dirty pouches, lots of washing and having him with me all the time.  There was also a good side - lots of cuddles, bonding together, being mum to a delightful little joey who had a very strong personality and loved being the centre of attention and helping a little orphan gain confidence and preparing him for the big step back to the wild.

Jimmy, who was a grey kangaroo, was a survivor and was lucky to be alive.A big, tough looking truck driver saw a dead kangaroo on the side of the road and noticed movement in the pouch. He took off his shirt and wrapped the little joey in it, put his cab heating on full and when he got to the outskirts of Adelaide rang Fauna Rescue.  It was quite late when he delivered him to me, so I had been able to prepare for the new arrival. He said the mother had obviously been dead for what looked like a couple of days, and was surprised the little one was still alive.

Jimmy was dehydrated at first but recovered quite quickly with lots of extra fluids.He was prone to bladder infections and had a few bouts of cystitis and had crystals in the urine which meant many trips to the vet. One bout was so bad that he had a prolapse which happened on a Saturday morning when the vet was at his busiest (why do emergencies always happen on the weekend?!)He said it was his afternoon off but if I went back at the end of surgery he would treat him.The swelling round the cloaca (the area where the genitals are) was so bad that we had to pack it with icing sugar, which the vet nurse had to pop out to the local deli to buy as this wasn’t standard treatment.  It soaks up the moisture and reduces the swelling.  This is an old remedy but extremely effective.  After a couple of hours the swelling had reduced enough for the vet to insert a catheter and put in a stitch to hold it in place.  Jimmy was under light sedation for a couple of hours and the catheter remained in place for four days until the antibiotics kicked in and he was back to normal.  The vet was very caring and said he didn’t mind giving up his time off as it was the first time he had ever spent his afternoon off holding the penis of a kangaroo!

After this episode Jimmy progressed by leaps and bounds. He put on weight and his condition improved rapidly.  He found my husband’s dictionary and crossword puzzles very tasty and at every opportunity ate the spines off my best books on the shelf. He came with me to many talks and displays and seemed to really enjoy the attention, once when we were in a department store with him in his bag, a man saw his long ears and wanted to know if he was a rabbit, Jimmy was quite offended!  As he became bigger and more adventurous, he graduated to the garden where we had an enclosed area with a kangaroo shed, and when he was older he was allowed access to the main garden.  He was not very impressed the first few nights outside and spent a lot of time hopping past our bedroom window.  He could only see over the sill by jumping high as he passed by and it looked really comical to see his head keep appearing as he hopped by.

We had a pool which in winter was covered by a pool blanket which was attached to the sides of the pool.  Jimmy soon found if he hopped to the middle of the blanket he could cause a bit of a wave and would stand there enjoying the sensation, a bit like jumping up and down on a waterbed!  Unfortunately the first time we took off the blanket, Jimmy went to do his wave riding bit and fell in the deep end.  He realised he could swim and swam to the steps where he got out and gave us a dirty look as if to say “You might have warned me”!  He fell in a couple more times and always swam to the steps to get out but now pretended he had meant to go for a swim anyway.

We felt he needed company, as kangaroos are social animals and joeys are usually raised in the wild in a mob situation.  He used to go up to small bushes in the garden and kick them, sometimes if they sprang back at him he would go all out trying to win the fight.  He also tried his kicking skills on me.  In the wild the poor kangaroo mum has to put up with a lot of this as it is a safe way to practice without being attacked back. A member at Mannum had a similar sized joey in her pre-release compound and it seemed a good idea to team them up.  Feeling sad at having to move him on but glad that he was embarking on the next step in his road to freedom we took him to his new carer on a beautiful summer day.

He was a bit of a bossy boots towards the other kangaroo, so we spent the morning building a second shelter so they didn’t have to initially share one.  Then we went to have a bite of lunch in the house overlooking the compound before doing a final check to see he had settled down.

While we were having lunch the new carer said she saw something flash by the window so we went to the compound with hearts pounding and found Jimmy was missing. There had been a good run up to the high fence at one end and he must have made an enormous leap to clear it.  We searched the surrounding paddocks for hours, calling him and inciting him to come and have his bottle.  The grass was very high and there were many large shrubs, ideal for wild kangaroos but making it impossible to find Jimmy.  As it got dark we had to give up the search and return home, a two hour trip, feeling very upset and worried.  Our much loved joey out on his own, and there was a busy country road just across the paddock, we were devastated.  For the next two days we returned and scoured a wider and wider area with no success. There were other kangaroos in the area but we didn’t see any, so didn’t think he would have joined them.  The carer had asked all the neighbours to keep a look out and the local radio station had put out an appeal.

On the third day we got a call from the carer saying “Guess what I’ve found”.  Jimmy had been found at a house on the other side of the road a couple of paddocks away.  The man had heard the appeal and got in touch for Jimmy to be collected.  We were so relieved to see him, he was covered in burrs and dirt and very tired.   He spent the next two days laying in our lounge covered with a blanket.  He only stirred to have a bottle, a few nibbles of feed, a quick pit stop in the garden, then back to sleep.   I think he was a bit of an actor because he would look very sorry for himself when we were around but seemed more alert when he thought we couldn’t see him!

We were back to the problem of him being alone again, another carer had a female grey about the same size so after she had brought Misty to my house a few times to familiarise her with our garden and Jimmy, she came to stay full time.   Jimmy wasn’t much of a gentleman, and at first didn’t like sharing the attention but after a while they settled down together and Misty was following him about.  By now they were about 16 kilos each and we wanted to try again to get them to a pre release compound.  They were moved to another compound in the hills and the night before, while I was sitting in the garden, Jimmy insisted on laying on my lap even though all ends hung over and he didn’t fit, he seemed to know that was moving on.

Jimmy didn’t settle at the beginning  and the first night there they had to take him and Misty indoors for a while, I visited them for the next couple of days.   Their new carer spent a lot of time in the compound with them until they started to accept her and after a few days they didn’t even look up when I visited. It was a bit like taking your child for their first day at school and they disappear off without a backward glance leaving you feeling lost. When they were about two years old the compound was opened and they went to join the other kangaroos on the property.  Jimmy and Misty kept coming back for years and Jimmy gradually made his way up the kangaroo hierarchy until he was second in line to the dominant kangaroo on the property.Misty still comes back to the house quite a lot, and last year when she was injured came back to the compound of her own accord and stayed until she recovered.  Jimmy is only seen occasionally now.

When he was younger everyone said Jimmy was a kangaroo with attitude, that was probably a polite way of saying he was a spoilt brat! We thought he was perfect, but then we were biased and he was our first kangaroo!