My first rescue- Plenty

My mum and I went to Plenty today to going looking for a kangaroo that hand been hit by a car that morning.

We found one kangaroo sitting in the padock by itself. when a kangaroo is by itself then that means something might be wrong. so I walked down to look and see if there were anymore. as I walked further i spotted another kangaroo laying down under the trees. I didn't know if one of them were the kangaroo that had been hit. the first one we spotted hopped away as we got closer but the other one didn't move. when we were really close to it the kangaroo started to try and get up but he couldn't. he didn't look very comfortable so we thought that it might have been the kangaroo that was hit. My mum called help for wildlife, another local wildlife group and then the ranger. after the three calls we went back up to

front- injured kangaroo Background you can see his mate watching on. his mate watched the whole time

the car looking for a texter and paper so we could draw a map of were the kangaroo was. As we were tying the map to the gate the owners of the land came. We told them what had happened and he opened the gate so when the rescuer comes they could drive down to the kangaroo. we were waiting for nearly two hours and mum was calling the ranger to find out when they were coming. we didn't want to leave until we knew someone was coming.
To make it easy for him to find the kangaroo- we tried to describe it on the phone but we also left markers for him on the road and the farmers gate.
We-

• left a red ribbon on a speed sign near the gate
• used the bottom piece of plastic from a enviro bag to write a map for the ranger
• left our phone number again
  

I tied a piece of red material around a speed sign so
the ranger would know where on the road to stop.
there were no street numbers

we used the bottom of an enviro bag to write a description and picture of where it was. We used a coat hanger to put it on the farmers gate and put some more red fabric around the top of it so he would see it.

Then suzy from help for wildlife called to check on us- she was able to come out. we took her to him and she said he is not the kangaroo that was hit because she said he had been there for a few weeks. On the ground was a lot of parts were there was no grass so he was eating it and scratching around. His wound was really badly infected. He had hurt his leg on a farm fence. a big mob of kangaroos came to see what was happening. the kangaroo that we saw at

the start was still there waitng, suzy said that kangaroo is probably his mate.  I watched her try and get close to him and try and cover him with a blanket. She wanted to sedate him so that she could check on him. She was able to give him an injection. We watched for a few minutes as he got calm. she was then able to go up and check him over. She showed us his back leg- it was MASSIVE. it had so much infection in it. it was really sad. suzy said the injuryed kangroo couldn't be saved so she had to stop his pain by putting him to sleep. suzy said the worst part of her job was having to kill the animal. she was very good with him. I watched her help this kangaroo the whole time. It made me very sad that he could not be saved but like my mum and suzy said, he would have been in a lot of pain, he had been suffering for a while and now he was pain free. I didn't like this part of rescues and I now know how hard being a rescuer is. So many end like this- I am just happy that we found this kangaroo- he was dying a slow and horrible death.

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Today i learned a few more HANDY things to have in the car so that if you find an animal and can't wait around for help

• a texta
  
• a piece of plastic (maybe from an enviro bag) to draw a map or write a note- being on plastic it won't matter if it rains
  
• a coat hanger - we used this to hang our sign on the farm gate
  
• thick strips of bright coloured fabric (to leave as markers for rescuers)
  We had towels and a blanket just in case too but we didn't want to try and get too close to this injured kangaroo so we waited for help instead.

the injured roo

the roo's guardian/friend

I am watching the roo from a far

Photos we took of a mob just up the road.

We saw these kangaroos near our home when we first went out to look for the injured kangaroo. Mum has a new camera- we stopped to take photos. There was a HUGE and I mean HUGE male kangaroo. You can see him in the photo's standing on his back legs. His tail was so thick and he had really ripply muscles. I couldn't believe how big he was. There was also a few joey's in pouches. they were big though- you can see their legs hanging out. One mum jumped a fence with a joey in her pouch- imagine doing that?
When we were looking at them a car pulled up on the other side of the road behind us. There was no one around as its all farms. They honked their horn to scare the kangaroos. Just as mum went to open her door, they honked again and scared them off and they speeded off. It made us both so MAD! Why do that? They were lucky that none of the kangaroo's hurt themselves while they were jumping away. I was MAD! You shouldn't do that. what if they jump into a fence when they are scared and trying to get away from you? What if they jump in front a car trying to get away from you. This was just really bad but worse because that's the only reason they stopped was to scare the kangaroo's away- really?!?!?!? (libby's mad face here)

IMPORTANT NOTE
We have a really good camera that has a long zoom. We were not near any of these kangaroos today. If you get too close to them- they can not only hurt you but you can scare them. If you scare them, the can try and bounce away from you- they can jump in front of a car or jump into a wire fence and hurt themselves. Stress is also really bad for them. So if you do see them in the wild- make sure you stay a good distance from them. For your safety and theirs it is VERY important.