Shall I Bother With Tomorrow?

I'm terribly sorry, but my Monday blog post is about to become my Tuesday blog post. This is because it's becoming too much to help my male staff write his Wildlife & Wilderness blog and help him with his reverse people smuggling business as well. So in a rare concession I have allowed him to publish his blog on a Monday while I move mine to Tuesday. In any case most of my readers are in the USA and Europe where it will still be Monday anyway. Here in Australia we are a day ahead of you (Except here in Queensland where it is still 1955.) which means while you are working, we on the underside of the planet are sleeping, hanging upside down like bats, and while we're desperately trying to eke out a living during the day, clinging to trees and rocks and stuff so that we don't fall off you are sleeping comfortably in your beds, unaware that half of the world's population has all their blood rushing to their heads.

In actual fact I am thinking of starting up an on line advisory service for those of you living in the past on the wrong side of the world. For a small fee you will be able to go to my website http://www.shallibotherwithtomorrow.com/ on a Sunday night and see what's happened on Monday. You will then be armed with all the information you need to make your day a success. For example if Monday has been terrible in Australia, the stock markets have crashed, the Australian cricket team has lost and John Howard has made a political comeback, you people in the USA and Europe might want to consider stying in bed and giving Monday a miss. It's a brilliant concept and I think I stand to make an absolute fortune which I intend to blow on basil.

This morning my male staff fetched our carrying cages down from the top of the laundry cupboard. This usually means just one thing- a visit to the vet. I've had enough of vets. It seems every time I go there one of them pokes a baseball bat sized thermometer up my bottom passage and then, to add insult to injury, weighs me and tells me I'm gaining weight. They did it again today too - not the baseball bat treatment thank heavens, just the weighing thing. We were only there to have our nails trimmed. The moment I saw my female staff approaching with that "I'm going to grab you and stuff you in your carrying cage." look on her face I started to squeal like a girl. I knew what was coming. I'm not as stupid as I am hairy. I hate that damned carrying cage and I always make sure I huddle in the back of it looking as miserable as possible to make sure that my staff are well aware of how I feel about it. Annoyingly Badger doesn't seem to mind. He's had the baseball bat and weighing treatment before too, but he either enjoyed it or has some sort of  memory problem. In any case he always sits at the front of his carrying cage, giving everybody death stares through the bars.

So anyway, as we sat in the waiting room waiting for the vet - Auntie Kara - AKA Doctor Friggin' Doolittle to call us in, a possum entered the room. I don't mean he came in on his own, strode up to the receptionist and said "I"m feeling a bit off, can I see a vet?" No, he was being carried by a lady in a box, that is to say he was in the box, not the lady. That would be silly. If the lady was in a box she wouldn't be able to see where she was going. The possum was covered by a blanket and had evidently been hit by a car. The lady had found him by the side of the road and he seemed unhurt apart from being a bit dazed. He must have been dazed because no lumping great human is ever going to catch a healthy possum. The receptionist took the possum from the lady and took him out the back of the surgery. That's the great thing about Aussie vets. They will treat injured wildlife at no expense to whoever brings the animal in. When the animal is well it then goes to one of many volunteer wildlife carers who look after it until it is well enough to return to the wild. You are even welcome to call the carer to see how the animal is faring.

Why then, would you not stop to help an injured animal? Especially in the little town close to where we live where there are two good vets and nothing is a long drive. It's a two minute detour at the most. My male staff came across a dazed baby possum a couple of years ago as he was on the way to his office. It was staggering across the road and cars were taking detours around it but not bothering to stop. My male staff pulled over, wrapped the possum in an old towel and took him to Auntie Kara. The whole thing took barely two minutes. My male staff later found out from the volunteer carer that the animal was alive and well and was soon to be re-released. Even if you see an obviously dead marsupial by the road you should stop. If it's a female there may be live babies in her pouch. Anyway, my male staff says that if he was lying injured by the side of the road, he'd hope someone would stop and take him to Auntie Kara. Though these days you never know.