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Published: October 31st 2012
Koala
Being adorable, and also nicely showing off his three fingers and two thumbs. TWO THUMBS!On our third day, after a breakfast of cereal, yogurt, and the biggest kiwis I have every seen, we set off for the Ballarat Wildlife Park.
Best. Thing. Ever.
After paying at the gate, we walked in – to find several kangaroos lounging about, looking up hopefully at us in case we had brought any food for them. Petting kangaroos is sort of interesting – if you find the sweet spot, they will actually start thumping it’s leg, not unlike a dog. However, as it turns out, they’re not so big into getting their tummies scratched and they DON’T roll over on their backs no matter how hard you scratch.
We had opted to have our pictures taken with the koalas. I was a little dubious, thinking that this would be something like buying your picture from a roller coaster ride at an amusement park. I was totally surprised then that when we showed up to have our picture taken, the three of us were invited INTO the koala bear enclosure and allowed to touch, feed, pet, and generally marvel at the three or four koalas that were there for 15 – 20 minutes.
OMG. ZOMG (as
Scott and Kangaroo
Turns out, they love to be scratched behind the ears. my friend Shelli would say). ZOMG squared.
Koalas are in fact, the very definition of cute. Australians LOVE them. Our guide referred to them as an “umbrella species.” If you need funding for a project, and you can tie in the koala bear, you’re pretty much guaranteed funding. For example, a particular species of snake was endangered after the bush fires during the drought, but conservationists were not getting funding that they needed – until they pointed out the connection between the snake’s natural habitat (gum forests) and the koala bears natural environment (gum forests). And then the funding came. As Scott wrote in an email to a friend, "Koalas are quite friendly. In fact, ecologically speaking, their only usefulness is that they are so damn cute that people want to save their environment….which then means we have to save the environment for other less cute, but more critical to the ecosystem creatures as well. Otherwise, they only eat the young, tender leaves of the tree. They don't help pollinate. They don't help keep the number of other species in check. They seem have come into existence only to force humans to do the right thing ecologically! Their job
is simply to be cute (but as some of us know, that harder done than said)!"
Other cuteness factors at the preserve included watching mom kangaroos with joeys in their pouches (ok, so, true confessions: while exceedingly cute, it is also just a little freaky to see a head and two paws coming out of a grown animal’s abdomen – I tried hard not to think of Alien), watching a couple of Tasmanian Devils fight over a dead mouse, a really, really yellow snake, and an emu who was sort of like "Yawn. More tourists. Can't be bothered."
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