Wobbly

Wobbly came into my care as a tiny joey of 800 grams (very approximately 1 and a half pounds).  He was just starting to get his fur.  You couldn’t see it all that well, but on the parts of his body that it was growing, it felt like velvet.  It grew first of all on his face and head, then his feet and “hands”, because they were the parts that would have first been out of the pouch.  He had really long legs, and there really wasn’t much too him.  He was named Wobbly because on the odd occasion he was allowed out of his pouch in those early days, he would try so hard to stand up, but he was just too young to manage it and wobbled all over the place!

 

It was a long road ahead for him, and a challenge for me too, I had never had a joey this small, but despite having a few problems, he thrived.  When he got to be round 2 kilos (4.4 pounds), another joey came into the house.  He was very beautiful, but turned out to be very dumb.  Errol (named for his extraordinary beauty) was really hard to teach about drinking from bottles.  Most joeys have it worked out in a few days, that the milk comes from the bottle, therefore bottles are good.  Then another few days, they will actually take the teat readily when offered, you no longer have to put it in their mouths for them;  but not Errol.  He was weeks…..

Later, when they started to spend time outside, his dumbness became even more evident, he also couldn’t work out about gateways.  If he wanted to go into the next yard, he would just bounce into the fence, and couldn’t work out how to get through it.  Wobbly, as do most roos, worked out you hop down the fence till you get to the gateway, and you just hop through, without pain or trauma.  So he virtually had to take Errol under his wing and teach him all the roo things that Errol would need to know.  Just as well, because he wasn’t taking much notice of me.  So Wobbly became the leader.

 

They both grew, and spent more and more time outside till they were outside all the time.  By this time they were 5 or 6 kilos, and the time was coming for them to move on.  I would have had Wobbly for about 12 months I suppose, and we had a very special relationship.  But I knew he had to go, and found him a lovely place for his next stage.  I took them out there and settled them in.  They had a couple of slightly older joeys for company, and the plan was that they would all be released together.  They had several acres to run around in, and most of it was bush, and on the other side of the fence lived the wild roos.  So they would acclimatise gradually.

 

They stayed there a couple of months, and I visited them a few times to see how they settled in.  Then I got a phone call from their carer saying that he was going to start the actual release process in a few days, would I like to come and say goodbye.  The release process entailed him opening the main gate to allow them to go in and out, and after a while they would stay out.  So the next day I went out.  My son came with me, and brought his camera.  We found the four of the roos together, and the two that belonged there and Errol took off, they didn’t want to know me.  But Wobbly came towards me, he remembered me, and actually allowed me to hold his hands and talk to him.  My son was able to get a couple of wonderful photos of this.  Of course I had tears in my eyes;  here was this little thing that I had reared, and he was ready to go.  I had succeeded in my job, but I was just so touched that he remembered me and wanted to say goodbye before he left.

 

It was a wonderful feeling, even though bittersweet, but I knew he would be okay.