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Meet
Maddy, the incredibly lucky little Swamp Wallaby.
Maddy
had been a pet for a number of weeks in a town yard. But luckily
her "owner" realised that Maddy needed space and time
to learn that she is indeed a Swamp Wallaby, and she was moved
to our place to prepare her for her return to the wild.
Apparently,
so the story goes, Maddy was found after her mother was shot.
The mother was crawling to get to Maddy hiding in the bushes
and the shooter found her. Isn't that a dreadful story. Shame
on you, shooter.
Shooting any Australian native animal in NSW is illegal, however
the NSW National Park and Wildlife Service sometimes provide
licenses to cull Eastern Grey Kangaroos when the numbers rise.
Shooting wallabies and wallaroos is NEVER permitted.
Although
I don't like it, I can understand that some farmers might want
to reduce the population of Eastern Greys. Swamp Wallabies don't
have the same high numbers as kangaroos however, so I can not
understand why Maddys mum was killed. I can only gather that
the shooter was doing it for fun. Again I say, shame on you
shooter.
Anyway,
that's enough of my opinion, let me tell you about Maddy.
As
all Swamp Wallabies, Maddy loved to eat!! And she ate anything
she could get her paws onto. We have lots of ferns and orchids
at our place........ Maddy loved them! We cursed her a number
of times when we discovered precious orchids eaten to the dirt.
She also ate weeds, leaves, flowers, you name it, she ate it.
And she loved chips and coffee....... so we found out when we
stupidly left them on the verandah floor and she helped herself!
Swampies are true garbage gutses of the macropod kingdom!!
She
was a very affectionate little thing, probably because she was
a pet for so long and was so used to human company. She would
spend several minutes grooming us, which I can tell you hurt
like hell, especially when she started chewing to get rid of
our fleas!
My
job as a wildlife carer with a release site is to slowly turn
a hand raised native animal into the wild animal it is. In Maddy's
case it was hidden deep deep down at the time!
Any young animal craves affection and needs nurturing so we
give them the cuddles they crave while they are little but slowly
distance ourselves from them, allowing them more freedom to
venture away from us.
Maddys
release process took several months and went quite well, especially
when compared to her macropod friend Sassy,
who refused to acknowledge that she wasn't human!
She
adapted quite well when we opened the back yard giving the macropods
more space to jump in. Swamp Wallabies love to hide in thick
bush and the back yard has lots of bushy shrubs to hide under.
When coming home of an evening we always laughed to see Maddy
dart out from under a bush, cluck hello to us and dart under
another shrub.
Maddy
turned into the wild wallaby she is much quicker than we actually
expected. Todd and I took a short holiday, during which I had
arranged for various fellow wildlife carers to feed and check
in on the macropods. We'll never know what happened, but when
we returned Maddy was a different wallaby. The affectionate
joey had turned into a free spirited animal with a desire to
be as far away from us as possible.
We
were quite concerned initially as she seemed highly strung and
we were sure that she had endured some kind of stressful situation
for her to change so quickly. But the
day after we returned we enticed her over with a cashew nut
(her favourite treat!) and checked her out. She was happy and
healthy, with not a mark on her. She allowed us a brief chance
to tickle her under the chin, clucked at us and darted under
the nearest bush.
A
few days after that we decided to open up the paddock, so that
the release area was increased from one acre to five. Although
all the other macropods stuck around in their new home for a
while, Maddy was off. She found the first hole in the fence
that she could and jumped away without a backward glance.
For
the first few weeks we saw her around but from a distance of
a few metres - we weren't allowed too close. It's been quite
some time since we've seen her, or so we think anyway - we have
a few Swamp Wallabies about the same size on our property, so
one of them may be her.
What
a wonderful end to a story. From her horrid beginnings, to being
kept as a pet in a small town yard, to being transferred to
us, to being introduced to others of her species, to being a
free, wild animal. It can't get any better than that.
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