First Aid at incident
scene.
Injured wildlife do not make good patients. They do not know we are
trying to help them, and they will bite.
You are now in the danger zone
- do not put yourself at risk. Get help if you need
help.
Visually assess injuries.
If the creature appears uninjured and you think
it is just stunned move it to a place of safety (such as off a road, but
only if it is safe to do so) make sure it is placed in the shade, and try,
if possible, to protect it from passing predators until it recovers.
Do not interfere with any young in the pouch.
If it is a large animal or bird and there are obvious open fractures do
not move the animal.
Return to your car, or move away from the creature to minimise stress.
Do not attempt to move any large marsupial or bird
without professional help.
Kangaroos especially are susceptible to stress, and capture myopathy is a
real and very serious risk, often resulting in the animal dying.
Call for professional help to sedate and prepare the creature for transport,
or for someone to humanely destroy the creature at the incident scene.
Stay where you can see the animal and protect it from predators, if
possible, until help arrives.
If it is a small animal or bird wrap tightly in something thick, such as
a coat or blanket, and try to prevent the injured limb or wing from moving.
Then transport immediately, but quietly, to a veterinarian or to
professional help.
Remember you can still get bitten and scratched
even when the creature is wrapped.
It is difficult to stem severe bleeding in
conscious wildlife without stressing the creature or putting yourself at
risk. If it is safe do so, wrap the creature in a thick blanket or coat, and
then apply pressure to the bleeding from the outside.
It is inadvisable to perform mouth to
mouth resuscitation on any creature where the history is unknown.
You are at risk from disease, and of course you
are dangerously close to the biting end if it suddenly wakes up!
If the creature dies
place the body away from roads so carrion do not endanger themselves or road
users.
Check the area for any dependent young, and report
the incident and its location to a wildlife rescuer.
Check inside the pouch for any pouched young that
might have survived.
REMOVING A MARSUPIAL FROM THE POUCH
Please be aware that the kangaroo is one of the few marsupials that, for
obvious reasons, has a top opening pouch. Many marsupials have a rear
opening pouch. The entrance situated just above the cloaca - the urogenital
opening.
The Older Joey - This little animal will be terrified and will show it.
It will hiss at its rescuer and verbally protest.
It can also bite, scratch and kick.
If you feel you cannot remove it from the pouch then please find someone who
can, because it will face a long lingering death, from the cold, or the
heat, or die from slow starvation, inside its dead mother's pouch.
Either that or suffer a cruel death from a passing predator.
Young possums, bandicoots and many other
marsupials are notorious biters, but surprisingly very few Western Grey
kangaroo joeys bite - however the one you rescue could be the exception to
the rule, and sink its teeth, so take care!
Older joeys fit tightly inside the pouch, and we
had to remove one young Tammar wallaby by cutting open his dead mother's
pouch with a pair of scissors. But usually the mother's pouch muscles go
slack during the act of dying and the joey can be removed by gently slipping
your hand inside and underneath the joey, and then easing the youngster out.
Keep a good hold of the joey though, because if it gets the chance it will
wriggle free and run. Please do not think because it can run away that it
will survive. If it is a pouched joey it will not.
It will die!
Wrap the joey immediately in something warm. There
are many dos and don'ts with joey pouches but in an emergency anything will
do as long as the joey is warm, quiet, dark and held tightly. Hold it close
to you, and get it to a carer as soon as possible.
They will make sure it goes inside the correct pouch.
For now it needs rescuing.
The Younger Joey - Because of its smaller
size it might appear easier to remove this joey, but there are other
problems. For at
least one third of its pouch life a joey is attached to the teat. Apart from
a small circular opening in the front of the mouth where the teat enters,
the lips are sealed with skin that has yet to break, and it cannot fully
open its mouth. Pulling the younger joey off the teat will rip the sides of
the mouth and cause more problems for carer and joey.
Therefore the first thing the rescuer needs to do is
look at the joey's mouth. If the sides of the mouth are sealed cut the teat
as close to the mother's stomach as possible, and leave it in the joey's
mouth. Pin the teat to the artificial pouch. In a few hours the mother's
teat will shrink and can then be pulled out gently without causing any
damage.
If the joey's eyes are open it is able open its mouth and can release the
teat. Therefore by gently pulling on the mother's teat it will slide out.
