Destiny
came in after his mother was euthanased due to 2 broken legs.
She must have been in trouble for some time as little Destiny
was himself in a rather sad state.
The
joey had disappeared from his mothers pouch in the short time
the rescuer 
took
to make the phone call to the wildlife carers, it was however
found again a short time later by the daughter of carer Marie,
that had gone out in search of the joey. She asked for this little
fellow to be named Destiny.
It
is unusual to receive a joey in poor condition when it comes straight
from the mother, as long as it is not injured of course, but in
Destiny's case, he was very dehydrated and thin, his ears were
coated in rotting matter inside and out. I imagine his mother
had her legs broken days before being discovered, and unfortunately
in a hot country like Australia, it does not take very long before
the flies discover an injured animal, and they lay their eggs.
There
was no sign at first that Destiny had maggots , but a very persistent
smell indicated that they had to be somewhere, and after 2 days
they came out from his ears. I had cleaned his ears many times,
they must have been inside the actual ear. I took him to the vet,
and he looked inside the ears for more, there were none, so they
must have been living on the rotting matter from his mothers pouch,
and after eating what was left, evacuated the area, looking for
more food. They were to find none, Destiny was now clean, and
on his way to recovery.
In
cases where there have been an intrusion in to the ear like this,
it is almost certain to cause an infection, so Destiny was given
antibiotics for possible infection. I was very grateful for this
advice given to me by a friend, 
as
two days later he did in fact develop a middle ear infection.
It did not last long as he was already on the antibiotics.
A
few days later tapeworm segments were found in his faecies, so
he was now wormed for Tapeworm.
I
started to wonder at this stage could there possibly be anything
else wrong with this tiny animal, just how much could his tiny
body endure and still look to be happy, as he did.
At
no stage did he look distressed in fact to all eyes that didn't
know better, you would have said he was a healthy little joey.
The
fact is, Joey's are just like humans, some are happy creatures,
that take everything in their stride, they fight back with all
their might clinging to life, with no thought of giving up
I
believe as wildlife carers, we are not the saviors of these animals,
we just give them the choice, they have to have the will to live
in the strange situation they now find themselves. Some will come
through the most amazing situations and injuries, others will
give up almost straight away.
Destiny
is now outside,he in the nursery pen with a bunch of joey's of
varying sizes and he spends his time looking at life from the
safety of his pouch coming out only a little bit at a time.
He
is now just over six months old, one month after coming in to
care.
4th
April 2004
As
you can see Destiny is growing and thriving in the
nursery
pen,
he still spends
a lot of time in his pouch, but
he is getting more and more adventurous specially at night.
He is now 10 months old, still bottle fed 4 times a day.
14thJuly
2004
Destiny
has been released with his adopted family group, he spent a total
of 7 months in care, it was a pleasure to care for this animal.
