Saturday 5 January 2013

Woes of (sometimes) doing right

Did you know that motorists in Australia should stop any time they see an animal lying on the road? As the country has so many marsupials there is always a chance of saving a baby from a dead mother's pouch, apart from the possibility of saving a wounded animal of any kind. I have been unlucky so far with wallabies - any joeys I have rescued have been left too long and have died despite our best efforts to warm them up. The results of road-kill are tragic: when I first came to this area there were big mobs of red-necked wallabies. Now, due to adverse weather events and a total lack of any road sense, the local wallabies have been reduced to a small and straggling group.

Photo from Google pictures.

The other day I once again came across a recently killed wallaby near here. I pulled up and went to check her. She had a big pouch but it was empty - hopefully the joey had been big enough to hop away and care for itself. I walked around a bit, looking to see if there was any sign of the joey. A concerned motorist pulled up to see if I wanted any assistance, and looked at me strangely when I explained I was checking for a joey.

I jumped into my car, embarrassed, and made a smart take-off. Um, well, it would have been a smart take-off if I had released the hand-brake. To my humiliation I instead produced clouds of smoke from my tyres...

Now, when I drive along my merry way, the car makes interesting plonking noises - the result, I guess, of tyres flat on one side. Tomorrow I find out exactly what my ill-fated stop achieved as I have made an appointment at the tyre shop. Why do I have the feeling it is going to be expensive...?

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