Reflections and Nightmares- Irene A Waters (writer and memoirist)

It was lucky that the bull forced me to walk the neighbourhood  because on a couple of occasions Mungo found a couple of injured animals which were in need of help.

from wikipedia

The first was a sugar glider. These are small squirrel like Australian marsupials which have thick grey fur and a black stripe running down their bodies. They are small, measuring around 40 centimetres from the tip of their nose to the end of their tail. Although they are omnivorous, they prefer to eat nectar, the reason for their name. Between the toe closest to their body and the finger in a similar position a membranous fibre runs. When they extend their limbs this opens out into a type of wing allowing the animal to glide long distances. I believe that they can easily glide the length of a football oval.

It was whilst it was gliding that, the one we came across, had run into trouble. It had landed in a barbed wire fence and the more it struggled the more tangled it had become. With the aid of wire cutters we managed to free it but the poor little thing had puncture wounds over both its body and its gliding apparatus.

There was nothing we could do but ring the local animal rescue service and transport it seventy-five kilometers to the nearest town that had a sugar glider expert.

The next animal was just a couple of days later. A wallaby had been hit by a car and killed with a joey in her pouch. I hated the wildlife carnage on our roads and being obligated to check the pouch for babies if you came across a killed kangaroo it could become a gruelling task if a joey was found. If it was sucking on the nipple it meant that you had to  cut the nipple from the dead mother with the baby attached and wait until the joey released itself. If you pulled them off the nipple they were in danger of mouth deformities which would prevent them from eating at a later date. Luckily on this occasion the joey was quite big and not attached to the nipple.

We made up a pillowcase with an old fleecy shirt and put the baby in head first and started the procedure to take him to the animal rescue people. This time they met us out on the highway so we only had a thirty kilometer drive to get to them.

My neighbourhood walks didn’t last too long. The road was boring compared to my paddocks which I missed so, I returned and braved the bull.