Tradie's thoughtless act leads to painful incident near building site
The tiny wild animal was unusually calm when she was discovered by a passerby on the weekend in the outer suburb of Officer. When wildlife rescuer Sarah Cooke got the call, she had hoped the roo was simply caught in a string of abandoned wire, so she brought along a pair of bolt cutters.
'Where those rebars are, there's runoff, like a drain. And builders in the area look to have just dumped crap there,' she told Yahoo News.
Related: Anger in Aussie tourist region after council kangaroo ban rejected
Cooke volunteers at Wildlife Incident Safe Haven (WISH) where she rescues and cares for native animals. As you would expect, she regularly sees terrible situations, but the little kangaroo's predicament was one of the worst.
'I went straight over and stabilised her, so she couldn't move much. I sedated her so I could safely get her off. Ideally, I would have cut the rebar, but it was too thick, and an angle grinder would have caused too many sparks,' Cooke said.
'Glimmer of hope' as kangaroo removed from bar
There was little blood or smell, leading her to suspect the rebar had missed the kangaroo's vital organs. As Cooke removed her from the rebar, it became clear how the unfortunate incident had occurred.
'I realised she must have somehow gone to jump the rebar, and her pouch has gotten caught. So she's just dropped straight on it, and it's gone through her pouch and then come up next to her leg, beside her hip bone,' Cooke said.
'I was holding out a glimmer of hope that if there was just muscle damage, she might pull through.'
After the kangaroo was taken to specialist medical staff an hour away at Healesville Sanctuary, hope began to fade. The rust and dirt on the bar had contaminated the youngster's body, creating a risk of infection, and the muscle on her hip had been damaged.
'Even if she had survived and healed, she wouldn't have been able to keep up with the mob. She would have been able to hop for 20 or 30 minutes and then need to rest for days,' Cooke said.
'It would be different if we could pop her into care for the rest of their life, we could manage that pain if we could have her as a pet. But we can't legally do that.'
After she was euthanised, a necropsy of her body revealed there was more damage than originally thought. Not only were multiple muscle bundles severed, there was a slight tear in her abdominal cavity.
Dumped rubbish also posed danger to nearby families
Dumping of rubbish is becoming a major issue in Australia, with Yahoo publishing multiple reports of building waste abandoned on public land around the country. Cooke has a simple message to anyone looking to cut corners and leave their waste behind for someone else to clean up.
'That could have been a kid, someone's pet. Right behind where the kangaroo was found is an empty paddock next to a housing estate with families,' she said.
'It's not fair. It's not hard to clean up. At least if you're going to leave crap lying around, make it so no one is going to get caught.'
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Cooke plans to report the dumping site to local authorities. In an impassioned post to social media, she shared details of the incident, not to make the general public sad, but to highlight the trauma rescuers experience every day.
"The things we see [are] absolutely so traumatic, and it can take a big toll. I have become very stoic over the years... But it still hits us, it still hurts, it still keeps us up at night, it still runs through our head on a daily basis on [whether] we made the right decision," she wrote.
"And it still god damn hurts like hell."
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