The Most Romantic Animal

Number 10 of Keeley’s February Challenge

Photo by author at Lone Pine Sanctuary, Brisbane

Bloody hell where does she get these questions from? It’ll have to be something cuddly. A teddy bear? Not really an animal though. How about a koala?

It’s not a bear, so please don’t call it a koala bear. It’s a koala. If your really want to know, it’s a marsupial which means it’s a mammal but the mother carries her young in her pouch and feeds them milk until they’re old enough to fend for themselves. She usually gives birth to only one joey (same as kangaroos and wallabies) but on rare occasions, she can have twins.

Koalas are soft and cuddly but you don’t want to touch one in the wild as they can scratch you to death — not literally to death, but they can do a lot of damage to bare arms even if you’re trying to get them off the road to save their lives.

They are picky eaters only eating a special sort of eucalyptus leaf, so when the bushfires swept through Australia in the summer of 2019–20 hundreds of square kilometres of forests were destroyed and the koala population was decimated. More than 50,000 koalas died in Eastern Australia which is why places like Lone Pine must continue to look after koalas and share them with tourists.

You won’t find them in the bush anywhere else in the world. You’ll know when they are mating — they make a horrendous high-pitched guttural noise.

Sorry if my story is not more romantic. Would you want to cuddle a koala?

Amy Francis, The Sturg, Julie KingGood, NancyO, Brett Jenae Tomlin, Karen Schwartz, Autistic Widower (“AJ”) Harry Hogg, Pamela Oglesby, Toni the Talker, Cathy Cremer, Ravyne Hawke, Julia A. Keirns, Robert G. Longpré — [he/him] — Canadian métis, Richard Bailey, Bernie Pullen, Katie Michaelson, Trisha Faye, Laure Dorsemaine, Michelle Jimerson Morris, Vidya Sury, Collecting Smiles, redkitewrites, Celia McKinley, Debika Kumari, Marilyn Flower and of course, Keeley Schroder