Meeting Marsupials

Kookaburra

Quokkas

Today some of the people from my church took me and Rob to Featherdale Wildlife Park in Blacktown, about an hour west of Sydney by train.  The park is an Australian wildlife reserve that is basically just a big petting zoo for Australian animals like kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, emus, wombats, etc.  Sadly, it is illegal to hold a koala in New South Wales (I would have to go to Queensland for that!) but I got to feed and pet everything else, and even got a hug from a kangaroo at one point!  We saw one kangaroo with a joey in its pouch...the bodies of marsupials are seriously amazing for what they've been designed to do.  We were told that sometimes kangaroos and wallabies can put off the birth of their joey for up to 2 years if there is a drought or other long-term danger, and just carry them around in the pouch since they know that the joey wouldn't survive outside...pretty incredible.  There were kookaburras just kind of hanging around as well, sometimes doing their "laugh" and one enclosed area had Flying Foxes which are really big bats that are pretty abundant here.  On any given night there are one or both of these animals in the tree outside my window!  The emus were very interested in the food (which was given out in animal-friendly ice cream cones) and would just come up behind you and grab the whole cone if you weren't paying attention.  The dingos were basically just like dogs, especially since they've been at Featherdale since birth, so they could almost be considered domesticated. The echidnas are like porcupines, but their spikes felt like plastic and weren't what I expected at all.  The echidna (along with platypus) is one of two mammals that lay eggs.  The wombats, I think, are definitely under-rated. They're "vicious" so I guess that's why people don't get excited about them, but the one I got to pet seemed really sweet and had such a cute face!  Probably one of the cuter animals there were the quokkas.  The Aussies we were with said they were just "really large rats" but I have never seen rats this adorable.

Bella the Koala

Wombat

Although I could have probably spent all day just walking around feeding the kangaroos and wallabies (especially the babies!) my favorite part were the koalas.  I had my heart set on getting to hold one but getting to pet them was still awesome. Koalas sleep 18-20 hours a day and have the smallest brain to body ratio of any animal (this is most likely because they sleep in the trees from which they eat, so they don't have to do a lot of cognitive processing in their lives..)  We were told that usually the koalas sleep the whole time people are there and you never see them move or even open their eyes, but today one of the younger ones named Bella was feeling pretty awake.  She jumped out of the tree and was walking around on the ground inside her enclosure.  The koala areas have a rail, but no fence so we were leaning over to watch her and at one point she walked right up to me sat on the ground and reached her arms up like a child being asked to be picked up.  I was dying to grab her, but I didn't want to go to jail so I just stood there and took pictures.  I think having a koala basically ask you to pick it up is almost better than actually getting to hold it, so I'll just go ahead and consider it checked off the list.