You Will Not Believe What This Kangaroo Mother Did For Her Baby!

The moment I realised what this mother kangaroo did for her baby, tears welled up in my eyes (VIDEO of moment at the end!)

(*For easier mobile phone reading, turn sideways for LANDSCAPE view)

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In the dark room the mother kangaroo lay sleeping next to me, what she was dreaming of I could only imagine.  This house on the top of a hill now served as a makeshift hospital for the relative few survivors we had managed to capture.  ‘Relative’ because over a billion animals had just died. 

View from top of mountain overlooking where the fires had been. Nothing, not even insects or birds, could be heard.  Except for a lone animal calling out in the distance. 

It had been a busy day working in the volunteer vet team.  The fruits of our labour, the wearied assortment of bandaged and injured patients, now lay strewn across every available sofa, chair and cushioned floorspace.  Hopefully they were getting some sleep as well. 

Dr Paul 'flagging' a koala down from a burnt tree.  With no living trees around, this koala had to be captured and sent to a specialised hospital otherwise it would undoubtedly succumb to dehydration and starvation within days. 

Covering an area the size of the United Kingdom, the Australian bushfires of 2019-20 devastated not only countless individual animals’ lives but also whole populations and even entire species, were decimated.  Most simply could not outrun the raging inferno, which human survivors described sounding like a Boeing 747 jet engine coming right at you.

This young kangaroo mother was snoring as I waited for her to come round from her sedation.  She’d been through a lot.  I had just treated her feet, which were badly burned and required daily debridement and bandaging.  She was in for a long road ahead as when - and if - she would be ok enough to release, the grassland and forest homes of the animals were no more. 

Baby kangaroo or 'joey', waiting for it's mother to recover from sedation after treatment for burns.

Prior to these increasingly hotter and drier fire seasons that are now the norm with climate change, treating burns in veterinary medicine was not well understood.  There were no standard protocols.  Unfortunately, we were getting practice at it and with each season, learned what worked and what didn’t.

Dr Paul at work treating the burned feet of a sedated kangaroo

This ‘roo must have been at the edge of a fire or caught out in the middle of a still smoldering forest, as her eyelashes and whiskers were burnt to stubs and her feet obviously endured burning embers for miles.  I just hoped there was not significant smoke damage to her lungs.

It had been a long day and my mind was tired.  Sitting there recovering this mother kangaroo, the only company I had was her little joey standing next to me, anxiously waiting for his mum to wake up.  They had a remarkably strong bond, I thought to myself.

I looked up at the joey, with his big eyes and doe-like eyelashes.  What a beautiful little boy.  Then I noticed something strange.  Why was she so burnt up - yet this little guy had not a mark on him?  He was completely untouched.  It didn’t make sense.

Then it hit me, and with the realisation I felt tears welling up in my eyes. 

The only way for this to happen, for her to be so badly burnt and for her baby to be completely unscathed, was if she pushed him deep into her pouch while she ran, leaving her to bear the brunt of the fire.  She was running for his life.

She could have left him behind, surely this big baby slowed her flight – this would have been the ‘biologically smarter’ thing to do as she could have gone faster and further, increasing her own chance of survival to live and breed again. 

But she chose to do what we would hope to do if we had to run for our lives.  She chose the more difficult, and selfless, decision.  She was after all, a mother.  

I picked up my phone and recorded the moment of realisation: