Instalment 2 - Friday 8 April 2011

I woke up a little bleary-eyed this morning after setting the alarm for the two hourly feeds my new little friend needs. With each feed he gets a little better at managing the syringe. I don't have a teat or anything on the end of the syringe, so it's not the best situation, but beggars can't be choosers.

The morning progresses well and I quickly discover he is a bit of a master on the syringe by now. He's quite a strong little guy and during the night my confidence grew with each feed. I think he is going to make it, and I now believe I can help him along the way.

I still don't know what sex he or she is, but for blogging purposes, I am going to make an uneducated guess and call him a he. He slept really well through the night and it didn't take much for me to notice that he loves getting the top of his head rubbed. I am happy to oblige.

After each feed, I gently massage his little body and he goes right off to sleep. I continue to feed him every two hours through today. He is just gorgeous and my heart fills with love for him. How could you not fall in love with such a precious little honey?

By afternoon he is quite the expert on the syringe and I somehow get the impression that he loves his food. He drinks about 1.5ml of diluted Carnation milk each feed.

I did some more reading on the Internet about possums and I am confident he is definitely a ringtail possum. An odd feeling begins to invade my space. I am beginning to feel very torn and uneasy with whom I should notify about this little guy. I really want to do what's best for him, but deep inside, I know this is his home and he should remain here. Oh, I don't know! This is not very easy.

I feel very protective. I want to speak to someone whom I can trust to help me make the right decision for him. I've done a lot of thinking since yesterday and realise this situation is not so cut and dried.

Some deep thought needs to go into this little guy's situation. I am thinking of the big picture. Willow Pond is his home. When he grows up, he is meant to be here. It's his birthright and there is no reason why he shouldn't remain here.

If I could find a mentor I know that I could raise him well. I'd certainly give it my best shot. I'm not silly. I know I could never raise a possum by myself. I know I'd need some help.

Now it was up to me to find someone. I'd have to think about this some more.

Another problem is - I don't have a permit.

After doing further reading I discover that you need a permit to raise wildlife. Well, that makes sense and I don't have a problem with that. Now I need to sign up to be a wildlife carer. That can't be too hard now, can it?

By afternoon, I decide to weigh the little guy. I use my digital kitchen scales. He weighs 59 grams. He is so little and there's not much to him.

His fur is smooth and shiny. I now know for sure from my latest reading, he is not what they call a 'pinky' (furless). Judging from the information, I take a guess that he is between 110 - 115 days old. Ringtails apparently don't get to grow too big.

Some more interesting information I discover is that I need to wipe his bottom gently with a tissue after he eats to encourage him to go to the toilet. I used to have to do this with Kayla's three puppies when I had to take over raising them after Kayla developed severe mastitis. You don't need to rub hard. It is more a tickle with the tissue.

I tried this the next time I fed him, however, it was a little tricky and awkward and in the end I wasn't sure I'd been very successful.

During the evening he becomes decidedly more active. I found a cute basket to make a bed for him in it. When it was time for me to go to bed I carried him upstairs in the basket and set him down on my bedside table, all tucked in for the night. His last feed had been at 12:30am and I was ready to hit the sack. I set the alarm for 2:30am and turned out the lights.

At about 12:20am I awoke to a sound that was not familiar. My brain finally identified the sound as one that comes from the little guy. I'd heard him make it before. The problem was that it didn't seem to be coming from the basket. It was coming from somewhere else in the room.

I got up carefully and turned on the light and dimmed it right down. The little guy was not in his basket and nor was Ian in bed. Ian, I discovered was in the bathroom. I knew I'd need to be careful about where I put my feet. I could still hear the little high pitched sound he was making. I made my way down towards to bottom of the bed and there he was, sitting in the middle of the floor and no doubt, very scared. I can believe that he escaped the sleeping puppies - again, and that Ian hadn't trod on him on the way to the bathroom. Once again his skin had been saved.

I pick him up and he bit me lightly on my forefinger. Cheeky! It didn't hurt, but it is always a surprise when he bites. He has bitten me a couple of times now. I'm a little awkward holding him yet, but I am getting better.

I collect his basket and make our way downstairs. It is now time for some milk. I quickly get everything ready and soon he is tucking in well. He is a spirited little guy.

Now I had to come up with a plan to contain him. I ended up using my netting throw that I use to cover food on the dining table to protect from nasty flies, etc. I spread it over the basket and secured it well. We climbed the stairs after I cleaned up the possum's things and I put the basket back on the bedside table. I left the light on dimmer and laid down and watched to see what would happen next.

I didn't have to wait long for a small silhouette to appear out of his bed. He spent a little bit of time climbing all around the basket inside of the netting, but then he when he discovered he couldn't escape, he burrowed back down into his covers and his hidey hole. Such a cutie.

The Rescue: Thursday 7 April 2011

Ahhh, day one of school holidays. Well teachers get pretty excited about school holidays too, you know. And it had been a long term of 11 weeks and all. I love my job. During school terms I work part-time teaching bright young primary students creative writing.

I had just had a very relaxing start to a very ordinary day. First a trip to the hairdressers and then off on one of my very favourite missions...a trip to Riverbend Books for some new titles and a coffee. Can it get much better than that? Nah! I don't think so. On the way  I got caught in two heavy downpours in what was a very sunny day here in Brisbane. Downpours are typical for Brisbane, even during our sunny periods.

With my field trip over for day, I drove home and slid the gate open, drove in, parked the car in the garage and proceeded to walk back to shut the gate, just like normal. But today turned out to be not quite so ordinary. For there near the gate, my eyes clapped sight of the smallest possum I'd ever seen in my life. All alone. At first I thought it was a rat!

I stopped short and just stared, gobsmacked. I wondered what would happen next. I wasn't sure what he was going to do. I was very careful not to make any scary or sudden moves. I quietly walked past him and slid the gate shut. My next thought was to find a towel to pick him up with. He hadn't moved.

I found an old towel quickly and then doing my best not to scare the living daylights out of the little guy, I delicately picked him up, gently wrapped him and cradled him in my hands.

Now what was I going to do?

I spent some time looking for mamma. We have possums living in our sheds, so I thought he must have fallen off his mother's back or something like that. I was hoping to find his mamma, but had no such luck. Where were they when you wanted them. Probably holed up somewhere sleeping the daylight away.

I managed to get my stuff inside and then I sat down and tried to warm up my new little friend. I hadn't been feeling that well for most of the day, so I decided this was a perfect way to make myself just sit down and relax. I found a comfy chair in the lounge room and sat down, put him close to my chest and began to warm him. I thought I'd wait until someone else came home and they could help me take him to the vets so he could be handed over to a Wildlife Carer.

I sat with him for hours. No one came home and while I waited I decided to open my laptop and google for information on possums. I didn't even know what sort of possum this little guy was at this point. Nor did I know if he was a she. I hadn't really looked at him all that much yet, but I remembered that he was a rusty red colour. The possums I'd seen in our shed, I thought, looked a different colour. They were more grey, but babies sometimes start out as one colour and change when they get their adult fur.

After a short time, I decided to go across to the shed to try to find a hot water bottle and something I could make a little pouch out of. I didn't come up with the water bottle yet, but I managed to find a little dog's knitted jacket that belonged to my son's dog, Ewok. It was perfect to keep the possum in so that he would be warm and feel secure. I somehow managed to transfer him into this new pouch and he didn't seem to mind.

I spent a long time trying to navigate my way around the minefield of information. I couldn't really find very many websites about Australian possums. It began to get dark outside and still no one had come home yet. The little possum was now very settled and seemed quite unperturbed by everything.


I read an article on an official Victorian Wildlife Sanctuary website that for emergency purposes you could feed small possums diluted Carnation milk. Well, I had some of that in my pantry and we have horses and I knew we had some clean syringes (not the needles) here for the times we've needed to inject horses. I carried the little guy around with me and found these things. I diluted and heated the milk to skin temperature and then filled up the sterilised syringe and gave it my best shot.

At first, I was very clumsy in the way I held the little guy. I'd never held a possum before and they have all these little toes and hooky feet, plus a very strong, curly tail. I was certainly very awkward and he didn't have a clue what was going on either. We muddled our way through though and I managed to get the syringe full of milk into his tummy; all 1.5 ml of it. But, hey...I was happy with that. Success.

By this stage I was beginning to think he was a little ringtail possum because I noticed the creamy-white tip on the end of his tail when he'd come unwrapped and the fur description on the website information matched his fur. So, okay. Now I had a very young ringtail possum on my hands. Literally.
By the time someone came home I decided, after reading what was involved in caring for the possums that I wouldn't take him down to the vet's tonight. If we did he would have to wait with barking dogs while a carer came to pick him up. I believed that I was responsible enough to be able to get up through the night for two hourly feeds. I'd raised my own babies, so I felt I owed it to this little guy. It all came down to common sense, really. I'd learnt by this stage that he was not what they call 'a pinky', (a furless ringtail possum), which meant he had a higher rate of survival, and the way he was eating, I really felt very comfortable that I would be fine taking care of him. Oh, and after another couple of searches in the shed I found the hot water bottle I was looking for. I was able to use this as a heat pad to keep him warm throughout the night.

So, that's how we began this journey.

I got up every two hours and reacquainted myself with the little guy throughout the wee small hours. Obviously he was quite alert during these periods. He seemed to really enjoy it when I gently 'fairy brushed' his back and head and rubbed around his ears. His mother would be doing this, so as a substitute mum, I tried to emulate what she would do. I did however draw the line at any licking to clean though. We'd have to find another way for that! Every time I held him, my heart grew bigger. During these feed times I always spend a little time with him held up against my chest so he could listen to my heartbeat.

So, until next time...
love from Willow Pond

Revamped: Cimmaron Soul to Willow Pond

This blog site has been dormant for a little while now, but it always stayed in the back of my mind. I kind of left it so I could set up my book club and writers' club blog and because I'm not a technological IT sort of person, these things take time for me to implement. So I contented myself with one blog at a time: my Novel Tea 'n Pages blog and left things be.

However, now I'm back with new ideas and decided this blog needed a name change and a revamp, which I proceeded to do. Now I'm ready to begin.

I hope along the way I meet up with many new readers. It takes awhile I know, but here's hoping.

I am going to start my blog rolling by sharing some adventures about the experience of being thrown into the deep end of a  world previously unknown by me. This world that I speak of is that of 'Wildlife Carer'. It wasn't planned at all. I just kind of fell into it. But I won't spoil it here.

I plan to chronicle my journey because you see, this adventure was born out of necessity and the fact that I have a soft heart, or maybe because I am a 'soft touch'? Well, it doesn't matter. The thing is I began this journey with zero knowledge and have been on a steep learning curve the whole time, but I feel like I'm coming up to speed fast.

Like everything new, there are times I feel confident and other times not so confident, but there's no choice, you just keep pushing on through and hopefully at the end, there will be reward.

So, I hope you decide to join me on my journey. I hope that over time I end up building a journal that might prove useful to any novice that finds themselves in the situation I recently found myself in.

so, until next time...
love from Willow Pond