Driving Miss Brushtail

Brutal summer in Australia has wildfires burning throughout the nation's southeast, unprecedented heat and, since November, a dearth of precipitation in Victoria.

Bad days for animals that already struggle to survive.

Last Friday was a scorcher in Melbourne. Animals were literally falling from bone-dry trees, keeping Wildlife Victoria volunteers like myself hopping. The female brushtail possum pictured here was found laying on her back beneath a tree a block from busy Fitzroy Street in St Kilda by a woman named Annette. The brushtail, with a joey in her pouch, was dehydrated, disoriented, and close to death. She was given fluids for 2 days at St Kilda Vet Clinic and deemed healthy enough for release. I picked her up Monday near dusk and drove her back to Annette's residence. She greeted me outside and directed me to the spot where she'd found the brushtail. It should go without saying that wild animals desire release. But when I opened the brushtail's box, expecting her to scamper up the tree, she nonchalantly laid on her back with a look on her face like a stunned mullet. (See above.)

By this time the St Kilda vet was closed, so I brought her to a local 24/7 animal clinic called Malvern East Pet Emergency (MEPE). A vet agreed that her behaviour was odd and took her into care. I was called yesterday (Wednesday) to retrieve her and deliver her to a carer named Kerri in Montmorency, one of Melbourne's greener northern suburbs, about 45 minutes from MEPE. I buckled her box into the backseat for the second time in 2 days and drove her to yet another temporary home, this one outdoors in a tall pen with branches and plenty of food. After a few days of observation she'll be released even further north than Montmorency, where she and her joey will hopefully establish a new home and live long, healthy lives.

Or, maybe I'll be driving her to yet another destination like a pale Morgan Freeman ....

Liberals: 'Destructive, costly, dirty pests'. Now, as for possums ...

I was about to publish this post when an SMS from Wildlife Victoria dinged my phone. Orphaned ringtail possum in Middle Park. Spoke with a tireless WV emergency phone operator. Hopped in my car for the 10-minute ride to Middle Park. A parent of a student at Middle Park Primary School had found a joey on school grounds and given it to an administrator, who'd called WV. Met the administrator in the school's reception area. She had the joey in a box, wrapped inside a shirt. It was cold to the touch, malnourished, its left eye shut from a slash across its snout. I tried to place the joey in a knitted pouch but it wouldn't let go of my hand so I pulled the pouch over my hand (as shown above). In my car I pulled another wool pouch over the first and drove with one hand to the St Kilda Vet Clinic. During the ride I could feel the joey struggling to breathe but its grip never loosened.

It wanted to live. But it was too late.

Arrived at the vet, provided this joey's case info (all cases are tracked to completion by WV), and finally handed the little one to a vet who told me what I already knew. Back in the car I noticed a small patch of blood between my thumb and forefinger, where the joey's slashed face had laid.

Who knows why it was orphaned. Had its mother been killed? Had its first-time mother rejected its joey for reasons unknown? Laying on the ground it was helpless. Had it been attacked by a cat? We'll never know.

What I know is that it wanted to live. I could feel it on my hand as it fought to breathe and see it in its one open eye.

Which takes us to the beginning of the initial post.

The Liberal party is the Australian equivalent of the Republican party in the States. Fearful, morally hypocritical, in servitude to business, etc. Their more conservative members are proudly racist, xenophobic and homophobic, cementing their places in the hearts of like-minded constituents.

It's been a rough first year in office for the Liberal premier of Victoria, however. He's been accused of being a do-nothing, secretive and uncaring leader. So his party has turned to the tried-and-true tactic of appealing to suburban voters by vowing to rid a dreaded scourge from their daily struggles: the 'spiraling numbers' of 'destructive, costly, dirty pests'.

Possums.

Choosing to issue its press release on a Sunday -- when the media is desperate for something beside alcohol-related car crashes to report -- the Liberal state council announced it had passed a motion to 'investigate humane methods to control possums in residential areas'. The Albert Park and South Melbourne branches of the Liberal Party added:

Possums are destructive, costly, dirty pests in suburbia. The numbers seem to be out of control and the listed deterrents appear to have little lasting effect.

As I've previously described, Albert Park and South Melbourne are two of Melbourne's most exclusive suburbs. Its residents have seen their property values skyrocket over the past 20 years. They live in a city often characterised as the world's most livable. There's very little crime. Streets are wide. Trees are plentiful. A beautiful bay laps at a perfectly landscaped shoreline to the west. World-class restaurants and cafes abound. Here's a bayside view, looking south.

Some might say the people of Albert Park and South Melbourne are the luckiest people on Earth.

Except for those damn destructive, costly and dirty pests. Those damn possums. Those destructive, costly and dirty possums.

Has any resident of Albert Park or South Melbourne had a day spent in front of a plasma TV interrupted by a nocturnal possum? Has an Albert Park retiree living on a fixed income ever had to sacrifice a night spent pumping dollar coins into a pokie machine because of a destructive, costly and dirty possum? Has a South Melbourne punter ever had to cancel a day at the track, drinking himself stupid with a group of louts, because of a native species that has seen its natural environment decimated by indiscriminate development up and down Australia's east coast?

The press release went on:

Culling has been adopted elsewhere as being the best solution. We suggest that contraception be investigated as another approach for managing these wildlife pests for those concerned with animal welfare issues.

Right. Hey, we're good guys, we don't want to be like other Australian councils who've mass murdered these animals -- animals that don't bite, come out to find food only at night, and don't spread disease. (And note the use of 'wildlife pests' to describe animals that were native to these shores thousands of years before the first fleet of British convicts landed in Australia in 1788.)

The very heart of the council's press release is bullshit, of course. Turns out the science behind injecting possums with contraceptives is 'ridiculous', according to Animal Active campaign director Rheya Linden:

The birth control thing is flavour of the month and it will not have any long-term outcome. The process of capturing a possum, implanting hormones and repeating that process for 14 years until the animal dies is incredibly stressful.

The Albert Park and South Melbourne councils know this, of course. This 'investigation' is the first step towards a cull. As Linden points out, labeling these brave animals as 'destructive, costly, dirty pests' is the beginning of their being demonised and softening public opinion towards their eventual slaughter.

I enjoy volunteering with Wildlife Vic because their mission is to rescue, rehabilitate and return animals to the wild. We have to be realistic in this often cruel world: resources are limited and residential development is unstoppable. If there's a humane and sensible option for limiting the number of possums in heavily populated areas, I'm all for it. WV's Amy Amato has pointed out that WV "supports the trial of a sterilisation program at Curtain Square and worked with Yarra City Council to put together the entire management plan (with the sterilisation only one part of the overall plan)." The plan was developed by a coalition of animal interest groups, residents, ecologists and councillors in 2010. There's no guarantee it will succeed, as the instinct to reproduce tends to swamp all efforts to quell it. But it's a plan that includes a baseline of possums' right to live as wild creatures, even in the most urbanised areas.

If you live in Australia you hear a lot about the Aussie spirit of a 'fair go', of the nobility of 'Aussie battlers', of 'mateship'. Maybe that's true in the Outback, where survival on the planet's harshest continent can be a struggle. In the leafy, lazy suburbs of Australia's capital cities, however, to raise a finger for anything besides the gaining of immediate comfort is downright un-Australian. I would think a native animal species that's managed to survive in an unfriendly environment would be a fuzzy poster child of an Aussie battler.

Then again, maybe possums get off lightly when a council labels them as destructive, costly and dirty pests. The indigenous people who greeted those ships at Sydney Cove have been called a helluva lot worse, for a helluva lot longer.

[NOTE: I am a Wildlife Victoria volunteer only. My views are my own. I don't speak for the organisation in any way.]