Dead Wallaby

When we came home from town today, there was a big surprise awaiting us... a wallaby had gotten itself stuck under a pole and died :(

We had just missed the show, but Belle said it was quite dramatic. Anyway, it had a little baby in its pouch, about 1.5cm long. poor thing. Here you can see a picture of how the Joey looked in the pouch.

Anyway, the girls were very interested in looking at it, we showed them in its pouch, the teeth and claws, and everything. Then we buried it. Well, we took it a bit of a hike from the house and left it under a bush, and the girls threw camelia flowers on it.

It was quite an 'educational' experience, anyhow, I learned some things. I'd never looked into a marsupial's pouch before. Even though I know its not really like that, I still have this cartoon image of a kangaroo's pouch being like a big pocket stuck onto the outside of her belly. But really, from the outside you cant see that the pouch is a seperate part of the belly, and the opening is almost closed. It did stretch very wide open though.

After all the excitement, we settled down for Purple's birthday dinner, which I wrote about in a seperate post, somehow feeling that the death of a wallaby and his birthday... didnt quite go together. Well, maybe they did ;)