Welcome to our Sunday Selfie project. You may need two tissues for this story, a sad tissue for the start and a happy tissue for the ending. This article is written by mom, Michele. A week ago one of our female Kangaroos with a baby joey in her pouch, broke her hind leg and had to be euthanized, because she could not recover from her injury. She left behind a baby joey, still in her pouch.

Baby joey and his injured mom, who has a broken hind leg. This photo was taken right before the light went and the rain started, and 2 hours before she was euthanized.

Baby joey update: day 1

He is still in the exact spot where he was last night with his mom, when we had to euthanize her because of a broken hind leg. We currently have torrential cyclonic rain, continuing for the next 12 hours.

He is doing his best to let his mom know he is lost, with continued “stress calls.”

I spent an hour observing him this morning, in the rain, and on a positive note, I saw him nibble grass. This is a very good sign. I will continue to monitor him closely. Watching him in emotional pain is heartbreaking beyond words, but I have to be careful not to get in his way of having a chance to survive.

The last photo sort of shows the rain.

Baby joey update: 22 hours into day 1

After the cyclone passed over and the rain eased back to “heavy rain,” I went to check on the little guy. He was not at his tree and my heart sank. I walked up and down and combed the immediate area for 2 HOURS but could not locate him. The rain would have washed away all his mom’s scent marks from last night, leaving him completely alone. In Australia, we are now in Winter and its after 5pm and now dark. I cannot do anything until tomorrow morning. We have more severe rain forecast for tonight so it will be another sleepless night of worry. I hope I can bring better news tomorrow.

Happy update: baby joey – 2.5 days: #4 is the happy part

Early this morning: here he is! He survived a cyclone and torrential rain, all by himself.

He tried to join up with two young bachelor boys. Can you pick which one is him??? BOL! The bachelors said he cramped their style and one gave him a smack in the head. Disaster.

A young bachelor trying to dump the needy baby. The baby then started screaming stress calls for his mom, ran back to the tree where she was euthanized, screamed (heartbreaking), freaked out and took off like a lightening bolt, so fast I lost sight of him.

THIS IS BRILLIANT!!! After coming out again and searching for hours, just when I thought I can’t find him – THERE HE WAS! He is the one in the middle, with his back to the camera. I saw him front-on and it is definitely him. (I didn’t want to get in the way, just to get a photo.) He has joined up with another mother kangaroo who has an “at-foot-joey” a little bigger than him. If he can hang with her, he wll learn how to survive, from her. She will not ‘adopt’ him, but she will keep an eye on him and guide him – I hope. She will teach him where the safe spots are, the best grass, water locations, habitat locations, etc. All the safety things he needs, Kangaroos need to stay with their mom for TWO YEARS so this is really important for his emotional and social growth.

PLEASE NOTE: Native Australian animals are very delicate, and when Kangaroos are frightened, they suffer “stress disease”, which is known as myopathy. This means that while they are very frightened, a random group of their muscles will freeze, and never unfreeze. They then go into depression and begin to slowly die, over 12 months, if not sooner – depending on which muscles froze. As well as having a broken leg, the mother already had myopathy, which was set off when she was injured. The baby was not taken into care because a very young kangaroo like my newly orphaned joey, will go into myopathy very quickly and ‘will’ die for sure, from the stress of being handled by humans. I wanted the baby taken too, but the decision was put to a team of Kangaroo Vets who all said the same thing – because he’s not a teeny weeny baby, he WILL go myophic and WILL die. He has his best chance of survival by himself. BUT – I am going to monitor the baby very closely. I am very worried about him and will do all I can to help him. If he is in trouble I will call for help for him. I have to be careful not to get in the way, but I want to make sure he is not suffering beyond what he can stand. Very difficult situation. I’ve known these animals for over 10 ten years so I am not taking it lightly! I will be monitoring him closely. Also, I have hand reared kangaroos in the past, bottle fed them every four hours around the clock for 12 months at a time, so I am very experienced in dealing with them.

Thank you for reading,

Michele, Pepi’s mom.