Edna - An Eastern Grey Kangaroo

In August, 2004, a joey was found next to it's dying mother. The adult female had been shot in the leg and had been found in a paddock by a farmers wife some days later. Unfortunately she had to be euthanased. Her joey was given to me to care for.

We named her Edna. She weighed 2.5kg, was very stressed by her ordeal and was covered in lice. We began treating her for lice, which happened to crawl all over me everytime I fed her. It took a week, but we managed to get rid of them all.

Edna was a joey with attitude plus! Once we had settled her in for a few days, we decided to let her have her first hop around the house. She went straight for a window and tried to jump through it. This wasn't going to be an easy joey to raise.

Edna settled in after a few weeks with her new friends. She was however the most skittish of all the joeys we had in care and we wondered if she would survive when she was released.

When all our other joeys were outside fulltime and would come for food, Edna was always the one who was last and the first to take off at the first little noise or movement around the property.

Just before release in Spring, Edna seemed to be fairly happy outside in the snow and one night came home for something to eat with snow all over her.

Edna and her mob were released in Spring, 2005 and came home fairly regularly for food. The time between visits home got longer and longer and for some weeks we didn't see Edna or her partner Matt. We weren't concerned as they had no doubt joined another mob and would venture home one day.

In January this year, Edna did come home, but she was alone. There was concern for her mate Matt, who to this day has not returned. Edna on the other hand refused to leave. She decided that she wanted to stay with the other pre-release joeys we have in this year.

Edna is the matriarch of a mob of 9. To us it seemed unusual that she wanted to stay, until we noticed that she had been grooming her pouch madly and on very hot days was licking the outside to keep it cool.We had a suspicion that she had a joey in pouch and this just confirmed it.

Edna allowed us to look inside her pouch and sure enough, there was a little pinky about the size of a golf ball, around 60 grams we estimated.

The joey continued to grow and finally her baby decided to peek out of the pouch on a fine day in June 2006.

Edna allowed us to peek inside the pouch and confirm the sex of the joey. A little female. We marvel at how calm this once stressed out roo has become. It appears that she had come home to have her baby where she felt safe.

Edna has continued to have joey's each year. Saffron her first is long gone. She then produced a girl named Sophie, then a boy named Wolfie, another boy called RJ (Robert Junior) who is now at foot and has a new baby in pouch.

Scott and Carola Vamvakaris
April 2010