Day 152/188: Hugging Koalas — Seeing (the world) 2̶0̶2̶0̶ 2022!

You. Guys. I don’t even know how to tell you how amazing my day was. I mean "our day” but whatever. My kids haven’t even been alive for a quarter of the time that I’ve dreamt of this day. I held a friggin’ koala!!!!

Forget my human kids. This is my new baby.

It was our first full day in Australia, and we had several hours to kill in Brisbane before our friend Anthony could drive us up north to Noosa. It was really rainy and a school day for locals, so I figured we might have the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary mostly to ourselves. (I was correct!)

I ordered tickets online and opted for the “hold a koala” experience, and Anthony dropped us off.

First off, can I say how lame American zoos are? I’ve often found myself feeling iffy about zoos in general, and Sagan is simply not into them at all. But I’ve realized that whenever we’ve gone to a zoo in any other country, I love them. In Amsterdam, lemurs walked and sat right next to us. In Edinburgh, the penguins parade by everyone once a day (in pre-COVID days, anyway). And there’s no way in hell an American zoo is gonna let you hold a koala like you can in multiple zoos in Australia. We have all these huge, fancy zoos, but you go there and can barely see the very bored animals. The rest of the world lets you get in there and interact, and I’ve never felt that this was to the detriment of any animals. America is just so afraid of lawsuits and stupid citizens lacking common sense (okay, that second one might be justified) that we keep it all sterile AF.

So we get there, and they give us free bags of kangaroo food. (Back to that in a minute.) And then we go in, and there are koala enclosures all over the place. But enclosure isn’t even the right word. More like giant playpens with roofs. I was sort of picturing them having a handful of koalas, but I lost count of how many we saw. They were all up in their trees, parked there like weird gray coconuts. God, I wanted to pick one off a tree and stuff it in my jacket. They are just as cute in person as they are in pictures. In the pictures below, see if you can find one wearing a shirt and one that looks like he may have to explain how he “fell onto the tree trunk” to the ER doctor. (How in the world is sitting there comfortable??)

We had some time before our koala-holding appointments, so we checked out some of the other critters while we waited. All of them were fun, and some of them were just fellow zoo guests like us. Bush turkeys and lorakeets, for instance, are like squirrels and bunnies here. The goats were especially chatty and cute. The Tasmanian devils were not even remotely scary, but they do like to yell at each other a lot, like grumpy old men.

Speaking of scary/not scary animals, dingos (which Sagan discovered recently are not birds of prey but rather wild dogs) are just about the least intimidating “wild” animals I’ve ever seen. The zookeepers put a couple of them on leashes and took them for a walk around the zoo. I’ll never be convinced these aren’t just pet dogs they bring from home to fill enclosures.

On the other hand, cassowaries (which are birds) are scary as hell. Why does a bird need feet that big?!

The surprise hit of the day was the kangaroos. I mean, who doesn’t love a kangaroo? But when they’d given us bags of food for the roos, we’d assumed there would be some fence we could go up to, with a bucket where we could pour the food or something.

Nope. We walked through a couple screen doors, and suddenly we were in a huge field just filled with kangaroos all over the place. No zookeepers. No fences. Just a bunch of weird hoppers that came right up to us to check us out. You can see the moment of realization on Story’s face in the last photo of this batch below. She’s mildly concerned but super excited. It was so fun!

We hung out in the kangaroo field for quite a while and went back more than once during the day. They are such crazy looking creatures, and it was so cool to be right up close to them, checking out their weird feet and joey-filled pouches.

Excuse me, ma’am, but I think you have a leg sticking out of your belly?

Aww, your belly leg has a cute face attached to it!

I walked up on Sagan hanging with a buddy, and I only realized later that I’d captured him taking a selfie. Meta, dude.

This one is for sure waiting for his friend Winnie the Pooh.

So, the kangaroos were amazing, and now we’re all in love with them too. But it was finally time for the main event - koala hugs!

I think the pictures of each of our turns tell the story pretty well.

Mike wanted to hold and rock his like a baby.

Story was measured three different times to be sure she was tall enough to hold one on her own. But of course, she is the animal queen and didn’t hesitate for a second. She did say the eucalyptus leaves tickled her face.

Sagan made me laugh the hardest because for weeks he’d been saying, “I’m not scared, but I’ve read they can claw your face off. I’m not sure holding one is the best idea.” I don’t know what he’d read online, but I’m assuming it was something meant to discourage people from just trying to grab them in the wild. I felt pretty confident the koala sanctuary wasn’t going to place a rabid koala in my arms.

But then, Sagan’s koala did slowly stretch its arm out towards Sagan’s face, which was terrifying. (Not terrifying at all. It was moving at sloth pace, and was super cute. But we still all cracked up.)

Anyway, Sagan decided that koalas are indeed very cute and not very vicious, and he would like one for Christmas, please.

When it was my turn, it was like they were handing me my third child, I was so excited. My first (yes, first!) koala got into a yelling match with another koala who was being held by a different lady. My koala handler explained, “He doesn’t like whatever that one said to him.” She then apologized for having to swap out koalas. I was like, “Umm, you’re SORRY? That I get to hold TWO KOALAS??”

So I held a second one. And he wasn’t fiesty and was cute as can be. They look so velvety, but they really feel like a short pile wool rug. Mike and Sagan said the koala smelled like poop, but all I smelled was eucalyptus and joy.