Raising a Orphaned BABY Kangaroo | A Joey Called Jack | Animal Documentary | Reel Truth Earth

As the sun comes up, life is stirring inside the kangaroo orphanage. Foster mum Enid Latham has been taking orphan joeys into her heart and into her home for more than 11 years. Her success rate is remarkable. She's saved more than 200 lives. Now Enid is about to face her greatest challenge, a pint-sized joey called Jack. Enid answers yet another call for help. Inside the pouch is a tiny kangaroo, rescued from the side of the road after his mother was killed by a car. The temperature has been set at 33.5 degrees Celsius, matching his mother's pouch. He'll get cold and he'll get pneumonia and he's not going to digest his food properly. And if it's too hot, his skin will just all dry out and crack and peel, so he's going to have a big problem there. The next 48 hours are the most crucial part. Frequently they'll live 48 hours and then just fade away on you. Jack's in good company with plenty of other hopping house guests. The smaller joeys have water beds, just like Jack, and live in the lounge room. The older kangaroos sleep in the sunroom, in their very own pouches. Okay, now I need to know exactly how much he weighs before I feed him. It's been a couple of hours and Jack has warmed up. What I'm going to do, and it has to be really quick because he'll get cold. He doesn't like being brought out. Here we are, pop that on and tear it off so that I know exactly how much he weighs. That's turned off. Back in there, it's nice and warm. And bob your uncle. Here we are, 266 grams. He's the youngest kangaroo Enid has taken in, just 90 days old. Luckily, he's in good hands. Now, I know what you're thinking. What about the cat? If he gets a little hungry, would he go for one of the smaller joeys? Well, that was certainly one of the first things I asked Enid when I got here. But she assures me he wouldn't hurt a fly. In fact, he wouldn't even eat a guinea pig. Completely trustworthy. The only real threat is killing them with kindness. They will curl up with the joeys and actually get in the pouches with them. But they can actually smother them, so you do have to be very careful with cats and things. And you have to be careful with bigger joeys too, because bigger joeys will jump in on top and they will squash them and do damage to them. That's why Enid always places a perspex lid on top of the little ones. Kangaroos are the world's largest marsupial and part of the macropod family, which means big-footed. They have long, muscular hind legs and large hind feet that enable them to bound along swiftly. Elastic ligaments in their back legs provide the energy for the hop. There are 48 different types of kangaroos, including greys, reds, wallabies and wallaroos. Males fight for the right to mate with a female. When she gives birth, a jellybean-sized baby crawls into her pouch and lives there until it's eight months old, when it starts popping out for exercise. Jack has stabilised and Enid is going to feed him. How crucial is it that he eat at the moment? What will happen if he doesn't? It's important now that I get some food into him, because they can lose so much weight so very quickly and tiny little ones like that, they don't last very long if you don't get the food into them as soon as you can, as soon as they're warm. Enid's trying to put the teat in Jack's mouth, but it's getting caught around his tongue. If he doesn't drink, he'll die. Their tongue, sometimes the teat will go in under the tongue and at the side of the tongue and unless the tongue's just right, unless you can get the tongue right, it's very hard, they can't suck. After all, Jack's not used to opening his mouth. At this age, he'd still be glued to his mother's teat. When they're born and they make their way into the pouch, they attach to a teat and they stay permanently on that teat until roughly 100 days. Finally, Jack starts drinking, but he's not out of danger. Enid must keep a close eye on him. If he sucks too quickly, he'll inhale the milk and this will kill him. So his eyes haven't even opened up yet. When will that happen? Well, his eyes won't open until he's around about 155 days. So he's got quite a while to go as he's only about 90 at the moment. So he's got a little way to go yet before his eyes will open and of course he's got no teat. Sometimes he's a bit hard to get it out of his mouth. He doesn't want to part with it, do you? Come on. This is just one of many feeds to come. From now on, it's every three hours, 24 hours a day. So the alarm clock's going to be set for every three hours right through the night. Where's that girl? Good boy. It is a real, real hard battle to get them to live from little tiny things like this. So we have to be really, really on the ball to get these guys to live. Jack's ready for a nap, but not before he gets a good grazing. The young vider's nice and warm, ready for him. I don't put anything cold because it will lower his body temperature. So everything has to be nice and warm to go on him. Come on, little man. We oil the body because the mother's pouch would have enough lubrication in it to keep the joey nice and moist. You can see he's well endowed. And particular about the tail, which tends to crack. And very particular about the little paws and the little toes. Because if the skin peels in their little hands, they can actually lose their fingers. What sort of condition is he in? Has he suffered much damage? He looks really great. He has no bruises, no obvious injuries. Of course, if the mother's been hit hard enough by a car to be killed, there's obviously something with the baby. They've got to be sore, possibly internal injuries or brain damage. But in this case, he looks really good. We won't know for a little while, but we'll wait a few hours before we even hope that he's going to live. Crazy pig. Back into a clean bag. There we are. Every year, thousands of kangaroos are hit by cars and left by the side of the road. Not enough people stop to see if there's a pouch or a baby inside. Quite often, the youngster will be unharmed, the mother's body taking the full impact of the accident. If left alone, the joey can die of dehydration within 48 hours. That's where Enid comes in. I've got to tell you, these little fellows really are as cute as they look. Their fur is just so soft. In fact, it's really important for a joey to have a lot of attention, a lot of love and care when they're growing up because that's what they'd be getting from their mothers. Let's face it, they'd be with them for at least the first six months of their life. Oh yes, they love affection. Yes, they're very affectionate, Easton Grey Zoa. They're the most affectionate, I think, of any of the kangaroo species. Enid's caring for 17 joeys. Her three children have long since left home and this is her new family. Dinner time is chaos. There's at least five feeds a day. Multiply that by 17 kangaroos. You can come and have a feed. The joeys are fed a low lactose formula as they can't tolerate normal cow's milk. A female kangaroo can produce two types of milk at the same time, a fatty kind for the younger joeys and a high nutrient variety for the older ones. Each baby has its own teat to suit the size of its mouth. It also stops cross infection. Enid may call them her children but there are some places they can't go, like the bedroom. I said it's not very nice feeling at 3am in the morning when a kangaroo lands on you in the bed and starts to piddle on you. You wake up very, very wet and very, very quickly. So Enid, I've got to ask you, what do you do in your spare time? Spare time? I haven't got any. What's that? Enid's been foster mum to hundreds of joeys and many of them have been released on her own property. Often they'll come home for a visit, showing off their babies. Come give mum a kiss. It's so nice, isn't it? Oh, it's so nice. Enid still remembers every one of them by name. Come on. Come here. So how does she tell one roo from the next? Just their characteristics and their ways and different markings on them. Yeah, you get to know them. Well, you spend a long time with them, a long time raising them and some of them have been here for quite a few years. Come here, darling. Dude, you coming in? Well, hurry. Dude is a favourite. He's been with Enid the longest. Get your big fat butt out. That's better. Most kangaroos live for 15 to 20 years, foraging in loose-knit groups for protection from predators. But Dude is different. He's a social outcast. Enid is his only friend. Hello, doody roo. What you doing, boy? Come home for a bit of a snooze, huh? And you pinched a loaf of bread. When Dude first came to Enid, he'd been castrated. He no longer had the mail sent, so no place in their society. He just keeps coming back because the big ones won't accept him. So he gets beat up every now and again and then he comes home and licks his wounds and then he goes away. He might go away for a couple of days, but that's about as far as he'll go. You know, he can go if he wants to. He's free. But they just won't accept him. OK, Jacky boy. Come on. He'll never feed. Come on. So, Enid, how's Jack going at the moment? Is he out of danger? Well, Jack's about seven months old now. He's 1.2 kilos. He's doing very well. He's doing everything right. He's going to grow up to be a big, strong boy. His eyes have opened, he's got a healthy appetite and is going to the toilet regularly, with just a little help from Enid. What I'm doing is stimulating him so that he'll go to the toilet. That way it stops them dirting in their pouches. It's much more hygienic. It stops them from getting disease. And it saves a lot of washing. Normally, the mother would take care of this. Their mother would lick them in the pouch, and when they get a little bit bigger, she would actually put them out of the pouch and make them go to the toilet. Before she lets them back, she can close the pouch off so that they can't get back in the pouch until they've actually urinated and passed their faeces. OK, babe. Just stretch your legs. Jack's getting some exercise, but he's still very wobbly on his feet. We're a bit wobbly. Back to bed. OK, so this is Charlie. Charlie Brown. How do you come up with the names for all the joeys? We just about run out. Yeah, well, it depends on the nature of the animal quite frequently. Charlie Brown's cheeky, Bruce is a wimp, Ali McBill was skinny, and there's been plenty of luckies, while Jack got his name from the truck driver who picked him up. Jack's certainly come along in leaps and bounds, but he still faces a major hurdle. Once he starts eating grass like the older joeys, he could catch a terrible disease called coccidia. It's horrible. They actually hemorrhage and die from starvation and shock eventually, or pneumonia. You can actually treat them and get them better back on their feet, and then they can get pneumonia and die. Coccidia is a protozoan that lives in the ground. When ingested, it burrows into the gut. The disease can be detected in the joeys' droppings. This sample has been sent from another carer. I'm looking at absolutely hundreds and hundreds of oases in here. Enid's talking about the egg of the parasite. You won't see any movement on the slide because it only breaks out when mixed with the joeys' gastric juices. The animal will most certainly die. There is no hope whatever for this animal. It will be probably dead within one or two days. Enid doesn't only care for kangaroos. She takes in all animals. Come on, Jess, let's go for a walk. Spooky, you need the exercise. Come on. She calls it Enid's retirement village. We both need the exercise. Hello, boy. Oh, look, come on. It's all right. Spook was rescued from the pound. No one wanted a deaf and blind albino dog. You can actually drive up alongside him and he won't even hear you. But the girls in the RSPTA know me for being a bit soft, and they sent word home with my husband to see if I knew anyone who would take this dog because he was going to be euthanized. And, of course, sucker me, didn't know anyone else that would like to take him, so I thought, well, he deserves a chance, so I'd better take him. Jessie was two days from death row. We brought her home to see how she was with the kangaroos, and she was actually frightened of them and frightened of the goats and everything else, so we brought her and brought her home. And then we discovered that she was an epileptic, so we have a blind dog and an epileptic dog. Good watch, dogs. OK, come on. Oh, Jessie, there you are. There's them goats, and you're scared of them, aren't you? Hey? You're scared of them goats. Look, you're supposed to say hello to them. Then there's Archie, the cockatoo with the broken wing. He's been with Enid for 23 years. And the horses. No animal is too small or too big. She was about to go to the knackery, but she'd been a kid's pony all her life, so I didn't think that was fair because she'd done so much and put up with kids all her life, so I felt that I had to buy her and give her a home for the rest of her life. Gizmo, the outdoor cat, hasn't got much of a story, although he does get mistaken for a kangaroo by the grandkids. Young Jessica came home. She was about three, and she grabbed old Gizmo by the tail and tried to stuff her in a pouch. She thought that every animal has to go in by the tail because that's the way you put kangaroos in it, so the cat didn't appreciate it very much. Now, Enid may be caring for dozens of other different types of animals, but her first love is still the joeys. All you've got to do is take a look around at her house, and there are kangaroos everywhere, and I'm not just talking about the ones that live and breathe. This is one of my favourites. I like this little joey that moves. That was sort of a trash and treasure, and I just had to have that one, I'm afraid. And the cowrie shell's quite unusual too. I like that. My brother-in-law brought that for me when I was 10 years of age. That's a long time ago. Kangaroos have been my first love since I was a child, and I was never allowed to have one. The neighbours had one, and it was a big male that used to hop down to our place and say hello, and I absolutely adored that animal, but Dad brought home echidnas and possums and all this sort of injured stuff that we used to look after, and we'd have stray lambs and stray everything, but I was never allowed to have a kangaroo until I became an adult and got my own. That was 11 years ago. She's always been at me about kangaroos, so I relented and let her have one. That was the biggest mistake of my life. Well, there's only been a couple of hundred since. Because the one has exploded. So why does she do it? The answer's simple. I have to give that little animal a chance. It deserves a right to have a chance at life. Enid says she can never have enough kangaroos. Doesn't that make you wonder if there's room for Sel? He's got his own room. He's got a whole room out the back that's set up with drains so I can have the whole house set up with kangaroos. And yet, even here, the occasional roo sneaks into the picture. Oi! What's this doing in here? But also in the far corner, there is some roos. They are pewter. Caring for the joeys is a full-time commitment. They can't be left alone for a second. So how does Enid handle that and a job? Enid takes the joeys to work. Luckily, she has the perfect job at Western Plains Zoo in central New South Wales. Enid is a keeper in the animal nursery. Where she can keep a close eye on all her babies. While the joeys are happy to sleep the day away, some of Enid's youngsters are a little more energetic. Susie's been with Enid for three years. She's the only mum she's ever known. Have you ever wondered how the kangaroo got its name? Well, I'm told that when White Man first came to Australia, he asked the Aborigine what the huffing creature was. And the Aborigine replied, kangaroo. Which means, I don't understand in their native tongue. Since then, the name has stuck. He's my bumpy boy. What are you doing? You're a big boy now, Jackie boy, aren't you? You're two and a half kilos. That's right, you're two and a half kilos. Jack's ten months old. He's got plenty of fur and he's spending more and more time out of the pouch. There's a stage where they suddenly take off and away they go. And when they first take off, that's when they start crashing and racing madly. You learn to tread very, very lightly. People have trod on them. Yeah, people have broken feet, people have broken tails, but such would I've never done so yet, and I hope not. Jack loves exploring. One of his favourite spots is Enid's office. Come on. Come on, Jack. Why are you out of your bed, bad girl? Oh, because you've missed it. As joeys get older, it's important to put them in contact with other joeys, and there's a new visitor to the lounge room. That's enough for a minute. Margie broke her leg when her mother was hit by a car. She's just had two and a half hours in surgery and a steel plate has been put in. This little girl's only new. I've only had her a couple of days, so she's not used to this bottle thing yet. So what we do, we try to make her feel secure. So we put our hand around her eyes so that she thinks she's in her mother's pouch, where it's nice and dark, and then we just open her mouth gently, very gently, with the thumb and the finger, and put the bottle in the mouth and then keep her hand over her eyes so that she will drink. Jack's not overly excited by his new flatmate. He'd rather be sleeping. Australia is home to some of the most diverse wildlife in the world. The platypus is one of the strangest animals, with its beak and webbed feet, while the koala is one of the cutest, a symbol known around the world. And yet, many of these amazing creatures are facing extinction. Every day, more than 35,000 native animals are killed on roads across the country. This is mainly due to the fact Australian mammals are nocturnal. That means they're active at night or dawn and dusk, making them hard to see. Headlights dazzle them as well. Bushfires are also taking their toll. The fires are a natural part of the Australian bush cycle. After the flames die down, new shoots grow, providing food for the animals. But at the same time, wildlife can be left homeless or injured, and often babies are orphaned. You will only enter the fire brigade, so please move. Development is also claiming lives, along with introduced animals and toxic chemicals. Luckily, Enid is not alone in her fight to save wildlife. There are thousands of carers across Australia. Natalie Halbert is a volunteer for the wildlife rescue organisation WIRES. WIRES is the largest rescue service in Australia, rescuing, rehabilitating and releasing sick, injured or orphaned native animals. Every year they answer more than 100,000 calls for help and rescue over 56,000 animals, the carers taking them into their homes until they're ready for release. WIRES was established in 1985 when an injured bird was found in the heart of Sydney, but no organisation was equipped to care for it. Since then, 250,000 calls for help have been answered in New South Wales alone. While the babies look adorable, native animals do not make good pets. Their feeding and housing requirements are complex. Most are up at all hours of the night, and many bite and scratch. WIRES believes the protection of wild animals is a community responsibility because it's human actions that cause most injuries. We're a Band-Aid organisation. We fix up where people muck up and we hope there are other organisations out there that will try and stop people mucking up. But not all orphaned animals are a product of their environment. Hello, sweetie pie. Oh, he's got a big day today. Sometimes their mothers simply don't want them. This little wallaby is an albino. He's certainly different from the rest of the kangaroos, something his mother noticed. Throwing him out of her pouch, he was found with scratched feet, shaking and alone. His rescuers tried to get the mother to take him back, but she just wasn't interested. Albino kangaroos are extremely rare and one of the hardest animals to raise. This little fellow was four months old when he was picked up and he's doing well. But his greatest challenge is yet to come. Because he's white, he'll always be an easy target for predators. He's also highly susceptible to skin cancer, which can bring an early death. He sleeps with me. He follows everywhere I am, basically, he is. And as long as I'm not far off, he's happy. When he's on the ground, he gets a little bit teary-eyed for a minute, cries. But yeah, he's just really close. After a while, I'll eventually start to wean him off me. But that'll be a few months yet and he'll start going in with some more joeys to get used to the kangaroo situation. And then he'll be out with the big boys when he's older. At the moment, he's in safe hands with plenty of love and affection, just what every baby animal needs. These are just young turkeys here and young peacocks. It isn't cheap hand-raising so many joeys. Ten boxes of tissues a week, tonnes of barley every year, and all the milk. That's where Enid's feathered friends come into the picture. We help to finance the hand-raising and the joeys and looking after them because it becomes a very expensive habit. Every night, she locks the birds away so the feral animals don't get them. No fox food tonight. Good kids. But even raising birds is never quite as it seems. Not when Enid's around. Did we mention the duck that thinks it's a chicken? The little fellow over in the corner, the little duck in the corner with the chook set, he believes he is a chook because he was raised with the chickens and he doesn't have anything to do with those ducks. He doesn't like them coming too close to him. Yeah, she's not tender. She's drinking. She just drank 100ml of Vydra to see if I could get her to go but she hasn't been since yesterday. It's been five days now and our newest arrival, Margie, has developed complications. I can't remember what time, just how often she did piddle yesterday morning but she certainly didn't yesterday afternoon. She hasn't gone overnight and I thought, oh, she just didn't drink enough fluids but I've got quite a lot of fluids into her this morning and she's not going. Enid's taking her to the vet centre at Western Plains Zoo. G'day Enid. Hi David. So this is the joey with the bladder problem? This is the little girl, yes. How big is that swelling? There's a bit of swelling, isn't there? Yeah, you can see it straight away, can't you? Margie must be weighed to see how much extra fluid she's holding. Is she not sick at all? No, she's drinking, she's happy, she's not calling or anything like that at all. An ultrasound will tell more. It's possible she may have a ruptured bladder and this could be fatal. The ultrasound is just like on a person. Gel creates a clearer picture of the joey's bladder and things aren't looking good. You may have like a busted bladder, unfortunately, which is a bit of a worry. Can't do anything. Otherwise it's got blood in it. Can't do anything with that, can you? No, apparently. But it will mean complex surgery and Margie's chances of survival are slim. But she's such a sweet little thing. It's always a nice one, isn't it? I think they were nice. Hard part of rehab work, isn't it? It is. That's the heartbreaking side. Three hours later, Margie is home again. It's vital Enid get fluids into Margie as soon as the anaesthetic wears off. She has to keep her strength up. A large blood clot had been preventing the urine from escaping from the bladder but obviously had moved a fraction and allowed the urine to come out into the abdomen. It was a major surgery for a tiny little joey like this but after having gone through two and a half hours of surgery on her leg, we weren't prepared to give up and neither was she. I just can't believe the will to live that this little creature's got. She's incredible. Normally an animal this size, you wouldn't even attempt to do major surgery like that but she's just so good. Margie has started going to the toilet again. That's a good sign. Come on, you don't want your getting upset. Just a little toilet, hey? Just a little toilet, it's all right. That's one thing I'll say for our vets and myself. We don't like to lose and we don't like to give up. Back in your little water bed. You're nice and comfy. Mind your head, darling. But Margie died five days later after she developed complications from the operation. It won't be long before Jack starts eating grass and Enid feels she may have found something that will help give him immunity from coccidia. Come on, Amy. Enid's property is plagued with the disease yet the goats have managed to develop immunity. So why not give the joeys the goat's immunity through their milk? She's been trialling it with three other foster mums using it on the older joeys. It's early days yet but we're getting very good results. We haven't lost any out of the 50 we raised last year. It's too early this year to say what problems we'll encounter this year. It's not a cure. It's certainly not a cure for coccidia but it could just help. Now, in case you haven't noticed, joeys sleep for most of the day and that's because they're nocturnal. But when they're not sleeping or eating, they're playing and that's very important for their social development because once they're released back into the wild they'll have to know how to interact with the other kangaroos. Oh, they box together and they jump at one another and race around and all dive in a pouch together and they have lots of fun together. Jack's 13 months old and he's hanging out with the big boys in the sunroom. He's started eating grass but so far so good. No signs of coccidia. He's also off the bottle. But that doesn't stop him yearning for the good old days. There'll be no more wreaking havoc in the lounge room. Enid is distancing herself from Jack so that he can be released back into the wild. Not much fun for Jack. What's a little joey to do when he's got the hiccups and his mum's not around? Well, we're just going to take these over. There's a couple of rednecks coming down here now. You can see it's very redneck country here. There are probably 20 or 30 rednecks living just in this area. So we're going to put these two little girls in with this group so that they can adapt to their natural environment. Shelly and Grace have been with Enid for 18 months. She's releasing them as close as possible to where they were found. So we'll just let these little girls go. I'll probably take off and go. There we are, babe. There you go. This is a friend's property, so Enid knows they're in safe hands. This place is not bad. Looks pretty good to me. I'll just pull her head up out of the bag so she can see what she's doing when her head comes out. And there she is. So, Enid, two more joeys back into the wild. What are you thinking at a time like this? Well, worried as to how they're going to go, whether they're going to be well enough adjusted to cope in the wild. Hopefully they are. I think they are. It's like seeing one of your kids leave home. That's what I was going to say. You're just like any other mother. That's right, exactly. Just like any other mother. I can see her hopping over there underneath the trees. Now, joeys obviously love their pouches. It's one of the places they feel safest in, but it really raises the question, how do they manage to stay in the pouch when their mother's hopping around out in the wild? Well, it's easy. She controls the muzzles on her pouch, keeping the baby snug inside. Of course, Enid doesn't have a pouch, so she improvises. We're just going to cut up some old sloppy joes and make some pouches. They make beautiful pouches. And they're cotton, so we don't have a problem then of them ingesting artificial fibres. That would cause a blockage and a joey could die. It's important to cut off the sleeves and sew up the neckline so that little joeys don't get their heads caught in the sleeve of the garment. Wombats are absolutely terrible at that. They'll get their heads and they'll just push forward. They won't go back and they can get themselves into quite a bit of trouble. A lot of pouches mean a lot of washing. Stacks and stacks. Four bedspreads minimum a day, plus pouches and pouches and pouches. Hanging pouches, these type of pouches, pillow slips, stacks. Jack's 15 months old and he's moving up and out in the world to the pre-release shed. From inside, they come up here, but they still have a pouch. And I still take them inside at this stage at night because the nights are still cold. And they stay out here all day in the sun and they've got their pouches for security because they like to be secure. If something frightens them, they'll race back to their pouch. So they need that security there all the time. So I'm going to get them out of their pouches now, take them back inside and feed them and then they can come back outside. Sometimes they stay inside for a little bit of quality time. Jack's loving his new freedom. Okay guys, we're going inside now. Dinner time. Out we get. Oh, come on. Up you hop. Come on. Up you hop. Quick. Up we hop. Oh. Out we go. Come on. Hey. Out we hop. Come on. Out we hop. Come on. There's plenty of food to go around. At this age, they'd still be drinking milk from their mother's pouch. Okay, genuine. Hello, genuine. Finally, a moment's rest. It's a rare treat. The last time Enid and Sel had a holiday was three years ago and only for a week. Of course, quiet time never lasts long. Is she all right? Coming out of it? She's right up underneath. Come on, Jersey. You're all right, girl. Hang on. Jesse, the epileptic dog, is having a fit. Hang on, Jesse. Enid increases her medication to try and stabilize her. The tablets are hidden in the dog food. Come on, girl. Come on. Yeah. Come on, Jesse. Come on, girl. We'll go. We'll go. Treatment is the same as what is for humans. No different. When they're in a fit, just assure them, stay there with them, and let them come out of it. You can't walk yet. You can't walk yet, Jesse. It's all part of a day's work. Now to some of Enid's tiniest and most endangered house guests. While kangaroos are in plague proportions in some parts of Australia, five species are already considered extinct, and a further ten are rare or endangered, like the bettong. This is a little brushtail bettong. I have three of them here at the moment. Breeding programs have been set up to increase numbers, but sometimes the mothers reject the joeys, throwing them out of their pouches. What we try to do is if a little baby is dropped from the pouch, and these mums are wild, we sticky tape up the pouch first of all, and try to get mum to keep the little babe. But sometimes that doesn't work. When this happens, Enid is their best chance of survival. She uses the vast knowledge she's gained from hand-raising so many orphan joeys. They may be cute, but they have a nasty nip. On the bright side, it means this little fellow is acting like a wild animal, and will soon be ready to go back to the bush. Jack's almost two years old. He's stretching his legs in the pre-release yard, where he can come and go as he pleases. The joeys still get a free feed, but their pouches are gone, and there's no more trips indoors. He may be popping away, but Enid couldn't be happier. And the idea, of course, if they're released into the wild, is to have them like that, because you don't want them too quiet, so they'll come up to people. Jack may be going it alone, but he's still got company. Like Princess, the deer that thinks she's a kangaroo. I had to lock her up, because when the kangaroos would go over the next door neighbour's fence, the deer would go with them, and the neighbour's dogs didn't quite like the deer going over the fence with the kangaroos. And she was most stressed, very stressed out, when I had to lock her away from her family of adult kangaroos. One thing's for sure, Jack knows he's a kangaroo, and it won't be long before he joins the rest of the mob on Enid's property. Whatever the future holds for Jack, Enid has given yet another baby animal a chance at life, and surely that's what every creature deserves.