For the Wallaby fans in MA

Pat told me about The Great Wallaby Escape back home. So for Pat and his students, and everyone else back home in the states... here's a pic of a Wallaby Joey that was rescued from its injured mom and brought to our clinic last week. When they're this young, they have minimal fur and are called "Pinkies". This little girl has a good chance of surviving as she will be cared for by experienced rehabilitators until she's old enough to fend for herself and return to the wilds of Australia.

Home sweet Home :)

Hey Everyone. Here is my little 2-bedroom, 2nd story abode. Apartment living is something I'll have to get used to again since it's been a long while since our little townhouse behind Making Tracks on the OBX; but after being accustomed to second story living in beach box houses on stilts, I new I would have to at least be on the second floor. And it's a very nice complex: 4-unit buildings with high ceilings and plenty of living space, sound-proofing between all units, indigenous-tropical landscaping and only a block away from the beach. I guess I'll have to find a way to suffer through these accommidations until something better comes along ;)

Those with OPHIDIOPHOBIA, turn away

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Lady Tai... she's an 8 foot long Coastal Taipan, the second deadliest snake in Australia (the first is the Inland Taipan) and she calls the Cairns Tropical Zoo her home. Not by choice, I'm sure, but she gets free board, three squares a day and never has to worry about carrying around a sign that reads "Will Slither for food". Well, she arrived at our clinic when her keeper noticed she was lethargic with a swelling halfway down her body and our Xrays showed she had a fractured vertebrae in her spine (probably from a fall in her habitat). Our choices were limited, so we scheduled spinal surgery the following day. You can see her dangerous end in a clear plastic tube being aerated with anesthetic gas and if you look carefully at the close-up pic, I'm using an instrument to indicate the fracture site and the small spinal rod I placed to reduce the fracture. In the end, the procedure went well and the entire surgery team (Mick and Roxanne from the Zoo; Peter, Vanessa, Jo, Selina and I from the clinic) are now hopeful we're making a bit of history in saving the life of a deadly ophidian. Talk about ironic :) And as an added bonus, I'll pay for lunch at the Tinity Beach Cafe for the first person who e-mails/posts the correct answer to the following: who is the galactic actor who was turned into a snake in the movie Ssssss?

Hoppity-hop... OUCH

It's been an interesting couple of weeks at work... including this little roo who finds a home at the Cairns Tropical Zoo. The keepers have no idea how it happened, but she broke her leg hopping around her paddock and they brought her to us. She's actually a pademelon (say paddy melon), a small relative of the kangaroo, and she's carrying a mouse-sized joey in her pouch (the small opening you see on her belly) that was squiggling around during surgery while I placed some small pins to hold her bones in place while her fracture heals.

E-I-E-I-O

And on this farm there was a monitor lizard who had wandered out into traffic and got beaned by a passing motorist. Luckily for Izzy, a couple of people familiar with reptiles through their work at a wildlife refuge came to her rescue and whisked her away to marlin Coast Veterinary Clinic. With help of a lot of sedation (apparently it takes enough sedative to knock out a 20kg dog to do the same to a 3kg monitor), she posed beside an ELO cd for scale before sitting still long enough for me to pin her fractured jaw.

Has it been 4 weeks already?

Well, it's now been a month since my arrival in Cairns and there's still so much left to see and do :) Last weekend I went up to Port Douglas with another vet to look around an outdoor market and what a gorgeous seaside drive it was to get there. Heck, the drive alone was worth it; with winding s-curves, steep cliffs just off the side (both hands on the wheel, folks) with waves crashing on the rocky shores below... but keep in mind the Reef settles most swells before they come in so the surf of Northern Queensland is dwarfed compared to OBX waves. Anyway, the market was fun and full of artists, jewelers, etc... typical amrket folks. I even participated in a juggling act by tossing a flaming stick to the guy standing on the shoulders in the pic.. funny guy; a lot like the street performers you run into downtown or on Boston Common (or at least used to :).

And since a few folks have asked about seeing kangaroos... here's a pic of me at the hospital with a juvenile wallaby for a physical exam before releasing it back into the wild. It was an orphan raised by a some folks here who have a total of 3 to release this week. And as luck would have it, I happened by the hospital today on my day off as a new arrival showed up for some hand rearing, so I got a pic of him as well.

Not much else will be happening this week as I'll be on call all weekend so staying close to home; but the weekend after that, I have 4 days off and hope to get some exploring done at the Daintree rainforest; so check in again in a couple weeks for some awsome pics :)