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Life, Culture and Politics from BrisVegas
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I’m going to be busy in half an hour or so,
It will be time for the 2am 3 hourly feed for the latest arrival in our family.
Takes about half an hour to go through the feeding process.
We were driving to the shops yesterday morning and there was a dead wombat in the middle of the road.
So I got out to shift it and saw a tiny foot protruding from the pouch.
A tiny foot that was moving.
So I took the baby wombat out of the pouch and since then we have had it checked by a vet, seems OK, weighed, 200 grams, no fur, eyes still shut, bought a heat pad, baby wombat milk substitute, tiny teats, improvised baby bottle to deliver 5ml at a time, made up a cloth pouch and introduced her [its a girl], very carefully to hannah.
$150 dollars poorer so far.
We’ve fed her, successfully, the as yet unnamed wombat I mean, 3 times so far.
Thats a good sign.
Her chances of survival are fair, the worst has gone but the next 24-48 hours will be a real test period.
Fingers crossed.
Congratulations on unplanned parenthood. Hairy nosed ‘bat? I knew a guy on Flinders Island whose house was full (literally inside and out) with native animals – Cape Barren geese, wallabies etc. Had a hairy nosed wombat named ‘Botham’ which would butt your ankles for a scratch behind the ears. Good luck.
Will be doing my walk around the new farm region and will wish any posters I see a happy holidays!
Yep Southern Hairy-nosed. Well named, naked all over but she has half a dozen whiskers nearly 2 cms long out of either side of her littly piggy nose.
Just finished feeding her and putting her back in her pouch with the hot water bottle [heat pad comes later hopefully]. She was a good girl drank all her 5ml of milk.
Time for bed for me, hannah’s mum has the 5am feed.
I’m exhausted, I’m too old for this parenting game.
Good for you hannah’s dad..not enough people check their road kills. In the early fifties I had an orphan common wombat. Fortunately he left home and went bush unaided when he matured. Great fun and very friendly. He’d rush out from under the house when I got home from work to go on ‘spotlight’ walks.
hannah’s dad,
Good on you. When they get big they get feisty and bite, so I’m told. Like, turn into wild animals. (I was very surprised to hear that. I’d always thought they were friendly little beasties.) And bash down house doors to get in and out. Still, despite their questionable reputation they’re still my favourite marsupial.
Hannah’s Dad
Good stuff – old wool socks are pretty good pouches for little ones like that. Chill is the greatest danger.
Good luck with her
Good on you Hannah’s Dad!
Here is something to make all the guitar players here jealous. “Four hands, one guitar.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcsSPzr7ays
Good one Hannah’s Dad. Helen that’s a totally awesome clip, love the bits where one of them picks and the other fingers. Wow thankyou
Fabulous stuff hannah’s dad though in my experience there’re few things more nerve-racking and sometimes heartbreaking than nursing an injured baby wild animal.
Good luck and well done.
Name competition… name competition…
Zelda.
Scott Fitzgerald.
As names for wombats go, I don’t think ‘Botham’ can be improved on.
Zelda was considered [after Zelda D'Aprano], Tumbe ["live' in Ngarridjeri], Oofa, cos that’s the sound they make, Ophelia, just cos, Jesus [from a family member]. We are still searching.
I’m back on duty, she has had 4 good feeds today, she’s warm which is important as pterosaur noted, active then snoozy.
All good signs.
Paul, we had one years ago, Mcduff the killer wombat, the terror of the neighbourhood, the leaver of scars. A vicious brute. Still cute tho’.
If we can get this one to maturity she is leaving home at a much earlier age than Mac did.
“….active then snoozy.”
Oh shit, I think I have become a hairy nosed wombat, today.
Not hairy eared, at least, because the lady hairdresser felt the need to trim the other day. I did not even need to ask!
Good on you Hannah’s dad.
What about “People Skills” for a name?
How about a salute to the country’s most prominant wombat-lover? Since it is female I suppose Ken’enry is out of place but perhaps not Henny? Hope it survives for you – I’m sure it will be getting all the care and attention possible to give.
Merry Christmas, Ozblogistan!
On blog hiatus til after the New Year, when hopefully I’ll have finally finished scraping this filthy decade off of me with a trowel…
OK, fine. Fer sure, fer sure.
Congratulations, Hannah’s Dad. In the name game, how about Zeralda, who tamed her ogre?
Happy Summer Solstice, everyone.
PB.
Finally the songsheet has arrived in Gerry’s letterbox. In the Herald’s “National Times” online edition i read today but dated tomorrow Gerry is once again reliably sideshow-barking the Libs’ propaganda. As usual, this is recycled garbage already dumped by Abbott (and Hockey). The old factotum has been told to counter the attack on WorkChoices from the ALP.
In Gerry’s opinion piece, the embroidery is new but the already threadbare material is identical to the same old line – expect to hear it ad nauseam. Here it is in shortened form (note the gnarled hack’s chaotic, tortured logic and fudging/falsifying of figures):
* The post office Christmas strike is due to Rudd government re-regulation of the labour market (which is total bullshit because postal employees work for the Commonwealth government which employs more than 100 people; and/or the AP, which employs more than 100 people)
* Kevin Rudd and his Minister for Workplace Relations, Julia Gillard, have been busy over the past two years re-regulating the Australian labour market
* Unemployment has increased over the past two years by nearly 50% ( a lie, it was 34.8%) from about 4% (fact: 4.3%) to nearly 6% (fact: 5.8%) (and Gerry glibly ignores the global recession caused in the main by complete deregulation of the financial system and slack oversight of reckless financial institutions in the US and the UK that had to be rescued with taxpayers’ money – Gerry’s medium-term memory is shot)
* Youth unemployment is ignored by the ABC, especially TV programs such as The 7.30 Report and Lateline – significantly less than that found on Fox News (bit of product placement, or insurance against getting the arse from the Herlad?)
* Leigh Sales (the ABC presenter) deliberately ignored the issue of youth unemployment (aired on ABC’s Friday Forum) and then diverted the conversation away from the fact that Arbib mentioned 47 percent unemployment (among teenagers in the south-west of Sydney)
* The comment (by Arbib) should have ignited astonishment (more to the point, this column by Gerry should have ignited astonishment from the op ed section editor and then spiked)
* Sales (egregiously, this Labor stooge, how dare she) suggested to Liberal Party frontbencher Scott Morrison that the Coalition should give Labor credit for its management of the economy (during the world recession)
* The reintroduction of unfair dismissal legislation (for businesses employing fewer than 100 employees although the new provisions require six months service from an employee before an unfair dismissal claim can be brought where the employer employers 15 or more employees and 12 months for smaller employers), has provided a disincentive for small businesses to employ young Australians (an unproven claim seeing as the new act has not come into force as yet)
* From next month most of Labor’s industrial relations agenda will be in place. The advent of Fair Work Australia will correspond with the seasonal entry of school leavers and young graduates into the workforce. Some will be taken on by the ever-growing public sector (which is more than 100 employee-strong and thus the comment reveals that a. Gerry is pointing to creeping socialism en passant and, b. that Gerry has difficulty in marshalling simple facts together to put together a coherent summary – under WorkChoices unfair dismissal claims continued to apply to employers with 100 or more employees)
Actually, those dreadful
postal workers have decided not to strike so we can all get our bits of coloured cardboard in time.
W00t! The latest Befte Barley Whine (bottled June 2006, nudging 10.5% alcohol content) is finally drinkable!
I’m a happy (drunk) man.
What I found quite disturbing about the postal workers strike was the management plan to call in casuals to fill the vacant places. What a shitty position to put those poor sods in.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/21/2777420.htm
And their families, joe2. So many scabs!
Obviously too tragically late for you Hannah’s Dad but I always thought a good name for a wombat would be “Bargearse”.
Anyway, rest in peace and burrow in heaven, little lady wombat.
How’s the little baby wombat going Hannah’s Dad?
My new kitten “The Blair Witch Project” decided to herd imaginary cattle all night last night. Being the social type she conducted her herding in my bedroom. Tried to rope my feet in. Currently she is shredding my carpet under the lounge as I type, no, wait, I think that’s my vintage poster she just found.
Gigi, her name was.
Like yeah.
That’s the names they give em to rope you in. Then when you get em their real names comes out.
I won’t tell you about the kitty litter. How it was plastered up the walls, round the corner, out the window, and up the street yesterday. Some unholy goings on there.
Can someone please tell me how to trim the claws of a Blair Witch?. I know I should know, but she goes all black in they eyes when ever I try.
This be some kind of witchery I never did see. I know this. It be a ranga. And it be true what they say about rangas.
Casey, Hannah’s Dad told us in the Lazy Sunday thread that the baby wombat didn’t make it, sadly.
Oh that’s terrible.
Hannah’s Dad sorry. Good on you for trying. What a shame.
“Can someone please tell me how to trim the claws of a Blair Witch?”
Wait, you like this cat? And you want to remove its claws?
And I thought you were alright Casey.
I said trim FDB, as in lightly file, as in a manicure.
Now are you going to help me or just get all hyperbolic on me as usual.
Tontos, I dunno.
I’d suggest starting with a general anaesthetic, Casey, otherwise you won’t have much skin left on your arms.
Can someone please tell me how to trim the claws of a Blair Witch?. I know I should know, but she goes all black in they eyes when ever I try.
You take them to the vet and pay them to do it.
Got any of that Whiskey left Casey(for you and the cat)? Safest to use one of those pet grooming services though.
Background, Fine:
The kitten is very traumatised, having been swung by the tail and slammed dunked by so called humans, had her mother euthanased for being feral, and etc, and so, I would rather avoid a trip to the vet, given that’s where she just came from, given that the vet agrees it would cause further trauma to return there, having been traumatised by all the baying canines, and only just getting used my place. But thanks for that.
However, good news, Oootz and David. No need for mind altering substances. I have just called the Cat Society and lucky for me one of them is coming to have a chat to Blair and explain to her that she needs a manicure and would she mind very much, if she had a manicure, just a quick nail file, as it would be a great help to all of us if she acceded to this request.
That’s what the Cat Society lady told me. She told me she would talk to the cat about it, see how the cat feels about it.
And now I’m rather looking forward seeing how this pans out.
Just got back from watching Avatar
Simply awesome! You have to see it. I won’t spoil the stopry but bring your tissues.
Action, CGI, environmental and indigenous issues, romance …
ick!
Visually, Avatar is the most stunning movie I’ve ever seen. Make sure you see it in 3D as well.
Now if Cameron had spent just a little time on the plot (Dances with Wolves merged with the Battle of Endor from Revenge of the Jedi) it could have been an overall brilliant movie. Even with quibbles about the plot, Avatar was surprisingly moving. Those tired old tropes were included for a reason – they still work.
Been watching the second series of Upstairs and Downstairs. Better than the first. Though I suspect the series has a very conservative bent. Like the one radical in it goes from bohemian to socialist to little shopkeeper and is showing all the signs of turning into a super capitalist. Still, its fun.
As above I saw Avatar last night.
One of the most perverse reactions was from Andrew Blot who in his now familar rants claimed that it was green propaganda while asserting that it would finally mark the end of environmentalism.
For me, this convinces me that whatever Blot once was, he is now completely unhinged — a psychopath. No properly socialised person who saw the film could use it as a springboard for embracing the filth merchant cause, and Blot is, after all, writing this because he fears just the opposite. His blog groupies weren’t slow to express this tension. For Blot now though, it’s like someone with reflexive OCD. He sees red where others see green and he can’t not vent about it. Those indigenes on Pandora were metaphorically sticking him and his groupies through the heart with every arrow and spear they drove into the invading terrestrial hordes. With this latest piece, Blot at least has dropped the fiction that opposition to mitigation is not part of a broader disgust for things environmental and a preference for rape and pillage.
It did occur to me though that in theory at least, a ‘true’ conservative might well object to Blot’s piece along the following lines:
Perhaps it’s time for some of us to do a little concern trolling over in the Blotosphere. This he is going to find damned annoying.
Merry Christmas j_p_z@18. The vid of Tarzan,Tonto & Frankenstein is a crackup and I sent it on. For those who missed it….
Was fascinated by the description given of the final rounds of the negotiations at Copenhagen.
This was the report of an ABC correspondent.
In the room were Obama and Rudd and other PMs and Presidents but the chinese were represented by a middle level negotiator from the Foreign Affairs ?( which department is unclear).
While our leaders attempted to finalise a deal the chinese negotiator would have to leave the room and call his superiors before he could proceed.
President Wen was not present at any stage.
Is this as the reporter thought a blast of the new reality – we can wait while the chinese decide?
Or has this been over-interpreted by xenophobic and parochial foreign devils eager to cast blame on the victims of the historic inequalities regarding CO2 pollution?
I’m curious to hear the opinions of experienced sinophiles.
murph, I heard that report, as well, and found it most interesting. It was Mark Lynas, attached to the Maldives delegation, who leaked the story. The link to his original article in The Guardian is below.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/22/copenhagen-climate-change-mark-lynas