'Drop Bears' and other Australians
Trip Start
Feb 03, 2008
1
7
33
Trip End
Aug 16, 2009
Perth,
Australia
Thursday, May 1, 2008
These brown lopers don't seem to notice our white rental car as they dash through the blue morning into the green underbrush.
Autumn in Australia is gorgeous.
The shapes are kangaroos, leaving their night marauding for a rest in the thickets near Dwellingup.
I squeal and brake hard, clapping my hands. I feel Dan wondering if he shouldn't take over the driving.
It's my first wild sighting of kangaroos and I was too excited to remember to take a picture of them. Not that I should be operating a camera and a car simultaneously anyway.
Dan and I are combining his once-a-year visits to his family with early morning photographic expeditions. This morning we're in the forest. Colossal King Jarrah trees thicket the banks of a mirrored river and the sky is a blue we've rarely seen in China. A kookaburra laughs his way between the trees, stopping long enough for us to chase him with our cameras.
We rise before light most of our three-week visit, trying to catch the early sun and whatever wildlife might covet it, before going back to Dan's family at a more civilized hour to visit.
In the afternoons we accompany Dan's family to some local wildlife parks. With his father Karl we go to the Marapana Wildlife Park again to feed the kangaroos, emus and deer that live in this petting zoo.
This had been a highlight of my last visit, but this time we got an added bonus--a one-on-one session with one of the park's koalas.
Kangaroo Jump
We visited in the late afternoon and by the time we'd used up our feed on the hungry kangaroos we were the only visitors left at the park. The koalas were due for their fresh meal of eucalyptus leaves, so the staff told us that we could stay and watch them eat and even pet one while it was too busy eating to be annoyed.
Koalas are not the cuddly teddy bears I had thought they would be. In fact, they have incredibly long, dangerous-looking claws, for climbing up and holding on to their treetop homes. Their fur is wooly but a little raspy too. And the eyes of the one we visited, close up, gave me the feeling that it was just tolerating us.
But maybe I'm a little influenced by Dan's tales of the notorious Australian "drop bear."
You see, he likes to disillusion people about the snuggliness of this Australian icon. He tells chilling tales of "drop bears," a.k.a. koalas, who land on unsuspecting passers-by with their hind legs and use their long forepaw claws to rip open their victims' throats, while sampling their blood through razor-sharp teeth.
While Dan regales people with this story, always people who have never visited Australia and often non-native English speakers, he always puts on his best Australian drawl for them. It rewards him with many strange looks.
Then he tells them that these pestilent creatures carry the S.T.D Chlamydia. And then, they really don't know what he's talking about. It may seem funny, he tells them, but it could all be solved if the stubborn koala would only switch from eucalyptus and live in rubber trees instead.
Our rental car
Ha ha, get it? Rubber trees....I'm still skeptical about the "drop bears" part of the story, because the koalas really don't look like they have enough energy to spring on people, and they seem happy enough munching eucalyptus to suppress any vampiric tendencies they might have.
But the Chlamydia is a true thing. According to a few conservation websites I saw, the koalas really do carry this virus, which can cause them blindness, incontinence and red-rimmed eyes.
We took pictures and petted the drop bear for awhile at the park before heading back to Mandurah, me feeling that I'd just touched a real part of Australia.
And then, of course, we washed our hands.
Another afternoon we took Dan's mom and stepfather to the Peel Zoo in Pinjarra near Mandurah. There were tons of parrots there, in large aviaries you could walk through. A few of them took a liking to me and my shiny earrings and then wouldn't get off of me.
As we were preparing to leave this park, Marilyn started chatting with the owner, who had designed the zoo in Kunming, Yunnan province and some other animal parks in Southeast Asia. We remember the Kunming Zoo from our visit in 2006 mostly from the line for the toilets and the fact that the day after we looked at the tiger during photo time and discussed paying 10 yuan to go pet him, it broke free and killed a person at the zoo.
We also spent some time with Dan's brother and 4-year-old niece and went with them to the Perth Zoo and the local sea aquarium, AQWA. The zoo was good, a nice leafy place to visit on a hot day with a good selection of animals, including a nice Australian section where kangaroos and lots of birds run freely over the paths. The aquarium was also an interesting stop. They had a good selection of colorful fish, an exhibit on Australia's famous poisonous fish and animals and a pool for touching some of the non-poisonous ones that really captured Brittney's attention.
