New Pets!

The duckbill platypus house is a rescue organization for monotremes…platypuses and echidnas.  These are two of Australias most unusual animals!  Someone said, “It’s as if God had a bunch of leftover parts and threw them together”!


The platypus has a leathery duck-like bill and web feet, fur and breathes air like a mammal, lays eggs and has internal organs that resemble a bird, and produces soft shell eggs and has bone structure like a reptile!  Males also have a sharp spine on their back foot connected to a venomous gland.  Each individual platypus has a unique neurotoxin venom so there is no anti-venom.  If a human is stung by a platypus, the affected area will swell about 3-4x normal size and is extremely painful.  The only treatment is a nerve blockage and the venom’s effects can last for weeks!  I have learned to NEVER pick up a duckbill platypus!  OR at least make sure it’s a female!


This funny animal swims like an otter dipping and diving and twirling through the water.  He has 60-90 seconds to find food before he has to come up for air.  Back webbed feet ending in sharp claws face backwards and rotate 360 degrees which is helpful with grooming.


Entering the next room, we are cautioned to find a place and either sit or be a tree; we cannot move around.  I sit on the ground and suddenly the cutest creatures are waddling all around us.  Echidnas are the only relative of the platypus, and they are just as strange.  Fur, quills, webbed feet facing backward, a snout with tiny nostrils and a mouth through which a long tongue protrudes, and innards like a bird!


They are fed a “grub smoothie” in small metal containers, and their tongues curl and lick and slurp up their treat!  They waddle to another bowl to see if any is left and then back to the original one.  One walks over my leg like it’s a tree limb on the ground and leaves an echidna footprint on my pants!  I don’t want to wash my pants ever!


These animals are protected so you cannot have them for a pet.  I’m tempted though!


We have a beautiful lunch at a local winery.  I’m drinking more wine in a week than I usually do in 6 months!  We have charcuterie boards for 2 people, and I’m amazed at the artistic and appetizing spread….bread, crackers, cheeses, salami, turkey, salmon pate, pesto spread, grapes, thin apple slices, and quince jam.  It was absolutely delicious to mix and match!!!


We stop at Matthew Brady’s Lookout, named after an infamous Australian Bushranger.  Not to be confused with Texas Rangers, these were convicts who had escaped prison and lived in the bush raiding farms and villages to survive.  Brady was beloved because he was a Robin Hood type figure.  When he was captured people wrote letters and sent gifts in support of his release.  However, he was hanged for killing the man who had infiltrated his gang and betrayed him to the authorities.


I am giving the fairie penguins another try tonight at a different place.  I “rug up” with my five layers of clothes, compression socks and wool socks, boots, hat and gloves, but when we arrive at the nature preserve, our driver asks if anyone wanted another jacket.  I thought, “Sure!”


By the end of the night, I could kiss this guy!  I am encased in a huge bright blue heavy coat with sleeves that engulfed not only my arms but my hands too.  We walk out to the beach and instead of hundreds or thousands of people as I experienced on Phillip Island, we are divided into 3 groups of twenty.  The wind is so strong off the ocean I struggle to stand up.  I asked one of the Alaskan ladies, and she thought it was blowing at least 50 mph!


And it is a COLD wind whipping off the water!  However, except for my face, I’m toasty in my borrowed coat.  Our guide tells us about this colony, and we can hear them quacking almost like ducks in the waves.  As we watch, one little penguin and then two come ashore followed by several friends.  They stand around and then more join them, and they waddle past us up the beach to their boxes in the heavy shrubbery overgrowth.  It’s mating season, and the males are singing!


We watch multiple groups swim ashore, and then we join them in a clearing in the shrubbery where a mother is feeding her two young fluffy babies.  They follow her nipping at her feathers impatiently demanding dinner!


We are told to NOT touch a penguin which is not only illegal and incurs a heavy fine, but the penguin will either bite out of defensiveness or think your finger looks like a squid and bite.  Their teeth are serrated and point backward so as they bite and you pull your finger out, the flesh will be stripped!


This was a much more intimate and enjoyable experience than before since I am within a yard or less of these penguins!  We ride home singing along to 60’s and 70’s music.


I love the animals and history!




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