In which I hug a wombat!! (and a possum and a koala and a baby croc and some skinks)

So my last trip of September was a field trip. That week was lecture recess, so no classes. However, my Animal adaptation class decided to have a field trip from Monday to Friday.

Alicia, Kathy and I left Monday morning so we could have some time at the beach before meeting the rest of the class at 5. After dropping our stuff off at the camp, we walked the block or two to Picnic Bay beach. Picnic Bay has a great view of Castle Hill, as well as this jetty that use to be where the ferry came in. The water was warm and clear, the sun was shining, and it was absolutely gorgeous. The rest of the week we escaped to the beach as often as we could. When we got back to the camp, we found out that we were all in separate groups, but that was ok, because we were able to branch out and meet new people. We all slept in the same cabin though. My group was the Bush Turkeys (Kathy was in Happy Possums, Alicia in Death Adders).

Castle Hill from Picnic Bay

My group got started soon after dinner with a nocturnal walk up the Forts trail. I was able to hear some koalas make noise, and it was described to me as a mix between a pig and donkey. I’d never thought about koalas vocalizing, but I don’t think I would’ve guessed they sounded like that! Our professor caught an old female off a tree close to the path. He hooked a rope over her and tugged gently and then placed her in a sack. He demonstrated giving it valium, weighing and measuring things like head length, checking for microchip, getting a blood sample, etc. Afterwards we got to touch her. She wasn’t doing well though, so we tried to disturb her as little as possible. We saw a lot of spiders, when you shine your flashlight there are all these blue sparkles which are their eyes reflecting back. We saw some other koalas, including a mama and a joey, and some possums, and some microbats. The most exciting for me was seeing an echidna in the wild! He was burrowing for ants when they found him, so they pulled him up and he was curled up on his side. He was covered in dirt and ants, so cute. We tried to be quiet to get him to uncurl, but there were just too many people.

Echidna!!!

The next day my group woke up at 5 and was on our way at 5:30. Not a lot of sleep that night. We had mammal day! We started out with possum traps. The traps had been set the afternoon before. My half of the group went up a hill while the other half were in the mangroves. My half caught 6 or 7 possums if I remember correctly. We would place a bag at one end of the trap, open it up, and chase the possum into the bag by tapping or blowing at it. The first possum that we caught that the leaders demonstrated on walked right into the bag. They’ve been trapping in that area for 15 some odd years, so the possums are pretty use to it and are practically tame, they just want to get it over with. After the possum is in the bag, someone would hold the possum (still covered by the bag) belly-up with the shoulders securely pinned in their knees. Another person would measure the head length, testes if it was a male (fun fact, possums have really big testes relative to their body size), and look for a microchip. If there wasn’t a microchip then Damien, our grad student would put a microchip in and take a DNA sample. The possum would be weighed in the bag and then let go. After watching it be done a couple of times, I gave it a go. First I measured a possum, and then the next one we caught I held him. The possum I held definitely peed on me. Also, that spot was where the march flies (absolutely GINORMOUS biting flies) got really bad. I still bear the scars from those bites haha.

How NOT to handle a possum, they'll run away

In addition to adult possums, we caught one wallaby. They freak out in the cage and have a tendency to lose control of their muscles. Bad for their health, and if they have a joey in the pouch the joey tends to fall out. So Damien crept up and after looking to see if there was a joey, he opened the cage door and let it out. If there was a joey that had fallen out, he would’ve put it in the pouch and taped the pouch shut. The tape would stay long enough for the wallaby to get control of its pouch again. We also had one cage with a mother and a joey possum. We opened the cage door and the mom ran out without the joey, but we could see her keeping an eye on it from a distant. We went away but where we could still watch. Eventually the joey left the cage and went up a tree but mom was still hiding. We left two people to watch while we checked some other cages (don’t want to leave the possums in the cages too long, because if it gets too hot they get dehydrated), and eventually they got to see the mom grab the joey.

We got back at around 9:30-10 am, grabbed some breakfast, had a bit of break, then a discussion about different kinds of tracking and trapping and ethics, like what to do if you find an injured animal in your cage. Then we had lunch, and then a skull lab where we learned how to look at a skull and determine if its marsipual or placental, carnivorous, omnivorous or herbivorous. We were given 10 skulls and had to identify what species they were. Then Kathy and I went to the beach, we had dinner, and by 9:30 I was asleep!
I had bird day next, which meant another 5 oclock wake up. We went on a walk in the neighborhood, up a steep hill (way too steep for before breakfast!!) to a lookout, and then down to the beach. I’m sure we saw some really cool birds, but I was not awake yet and was pretty much just walking, trying to keep my mind off of the walking.

After brekkie we spilt up into small groups to bird watch. I went with some new friends I'd made before. They made the field trip a lot of fun. We saw a nesting pair of figbirds, a greenwing parrot, some bee-eaters, and some adorable sunbirds, and some kingfishers. The bee-eaters were so gorgeous. The sunbirds were hovering over flowers, and we saw a mating par of them too. One kingfisher was on a power line, and he was grooming himself because he was all wet, muddy, and bedraggled. After birdwatching for a while we got ice cream and went for a swim. After lunch we had a lab of measuring preserved bird wings, and then beach for the rest of the day!

Female Sunbird

The next day, Thursday, was reptile day so we got to sleep in (7:30) until breakfast. After breakfast we learned how to identify lizards using pickled specimens. A little before lunch we headed out to a creek. There we caught skinks until lunchtime. I hunted about 6 skinks in one little area for a good hour or two. I caught one eventually. They were driving me CRAZY, I’d see them sunning themselves, and then I’d chase after them and keep almost catching them and sometimes have them in my hand only for them to escape and disappear for a bit. There were plenty of march flies around, so we used those to fish for the skinks. We kill/stun a fly and tie it to a stick with a piece of our hair and dangle it in front of the skinks. I had a couple grab onto it and hold onto it while air borne, but most of escaped with the fly. I actually got one to get into my plastic bag (that’s where we held the ones we caught), only to escape!!  I did eventually nab one though, so I was happy. We identified the skinks and then had a picnic lunch.

Skink

After lunch we measured the skinks and then raced them. We measured their temperature with a temperature gun, placed them on a track, and timed how long it took them to run a meter. Then we placed the same skinks in an esky for a bit, repeated the racing, then placed them in the sun and repeated the racing.

After that, we had time to (you guessed it!) go to the beach before dinner. I think that was the day I suffered my big barnacle injury. No, actually, it was bird day. Anyway, I know everyone says that Australia has all these deadly animals that can kill you. While that may be true, let me tell you, you don’t need to be looking out for all those venomous creatures. It’s the barnacles that are out to get you! I was just swimming along when all of a sudden I bumped into a boat ramp, and a barnacle took a big CHUNK out of my leg. Barnacle wounds tend to infect too. Barnacles 2 (if you remember my infected hand, that was #1), Lara 0.

Barnacle injury

After dinner was a meeting where the profs and grad students all gave a seminar about their current jobs and how they got there. We all went to the pub afterwards. We left the next morning.

October has mostly been writing assignments. But I’ve also been hanging out with the people here a lot. I have a close knit group of friends that I absolutely love to death. They have made this trip so much fun ☺ I’ve also been continuing to learn to cook, a goal that coincides so well with spending time with friends. Yay food!

Of course the big news is that I finally got to hug a wombat!! Saturday a group of my friends and I went to Billabong wildlife sanctuary and I FINALLY got to hug a wombat!!! And it was as wonderful as I thought it would be :) The whole day was great. It was perfect weather, sunny but cool, and the grounds were quite pretty, quiet and relaxing. I also held a koala. In one of the exhibits there was also a wombat that was right up against the fence and I was playing with him. I had a kookaburra almost take off my ear. I had some fun with the kangaroos like usual. There were these adorable rufus bettongs hanging out in a log. After wandering around looking at the exhibits there was a series of shows. Wombats were first. We got our pictures taken with Tonka. Chloe, a northern hairy-nosed wombat was fed with a bottle and then wandered around saying hi to everyone. She was so cute and so soft. Then the reptiles. I held a baby croc, and put a bearded dragon on my head. We fed the turtles and had a turtle race, and then watched the crocs get fed.

HUG A WOMBAT!!!!!