KOALAS

 A Furry Cutie

        One afternoon on my first trip down under we rode out of town to visit koalas in a zoo. A local guide told us, “Koalas are  a marsupial. They have very sharp claws so we wean them from their mother onto a stuffed koala. They can cuddle with the toy, and in captivity we can handle them without too many nasty scratches.

         “Koala is an aboriginal word meaning does not drink. Koalas derive all of their fluid from an exclusive diet of eucalyptus leaves. They are very susceptible to human illness. Virtually all of the koalas on Phillip Island are infected with clymadia and are dying out. They are on a preserve there and when they are all gone, healthy koalas will be reintroduced to the island.”

         Koalas are nocturnal and can travel as far as five miles in search for food. They are a small animal, not much bigger than a good size teddy bear.
        New South Wales and Queensland climates are warm so the koalas are grey with white on the inner ears and chest. Victoria is cooler so the animals are larger with a darker fur, more of a charcoal grey.

        At birth a koala is a furless newborn that looks like a pink jellybean. This tiny animal claws and climbs its way up mama’s stomach to crawl into her pouch where it spends six months. When it emerges the baby clings to mama’s back until it reaches full maturity. Koalas seldom have more than one baby and if they do only one survives as the pouch is only big enough to accommodate one baby. The normal life span is 16-18 years.

        It was awesome to hold a small koala as it clung to its toy.

        In Tasmania we saw koalas in the wild. One actually climbed down from a tree and tried to climb up a gal’s pant leg. We figured the little guy thought her white sneakers were rocks and her pants were the same color as the bark of a tree. The guide rescued the koala but not before he left a couple of puncture holes in her pants.