11 February 2009

Australian Brush Fire Victim



Narrative for the video-
He said he was in the middle of backburning at Mirboo North when he saw the stricken koala. 'I could see she had sore feet and was in trouble, so I pulled over the fire truck. She just plonked herself down, as if to say 'I'm beat', he said."

"I offered her a drink and she drank three bottles."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Weird little animals. Apparently they are normally very sleepy and low-metabolism. ( Also apparently not afraid of humans!)

The wiki entry is interesting. I was struck by the huge size of their head, but apparently the inside looks a little like Homer Simpsons:

.... about 40% of the cranial cavity is filled with cerebrospinal fluid, while the brain's two cerebral hemispheres are like "a pair of shrivelled walnut halves on top of the brain stem, in contact neither with each other nor the bones of the skull. It is the only animal on Earth with such a strangely reduced brain."[16]

Anonymous said...

More importantly, here is the secure link you can use to donate to the bushfire victims via Red Cross Australia.

I would like to ask, greybeard, that you include the above link in a post so that it will get more exposure.

I have lived in Australia my entire life, and never have I heard of a bushfire claiming so many lives (they are even worse than the Ash Wednesday fires). We have them nearly every summer in one part of the country or another, but the amazing scale and ferocity of this series of fires is unprecedented.

It is in fact so bad that victims of a flood from northern Queensland are actually using some of the disaster relief money granted to them by the government to donate to the fire victims as they say "they are much worse off"

That's the true Aussie spirit. If they can donate some of their money, I know many of the readers of this blog can too.

Every bit helps.

Think of it this way - a bottle of water costs around $2 AUD, and there's a lot of thirsty koalas out there.

CJ said...

It's an amazing video. And good for the fireman.

That entire situation is so unbearable sad, especially since it was arson.

cjh