MAY 2002 My cousin's gone an adopted a baby kangaroo, and she's used the quilted bag I made for her a couple of Christmases ago as a proptype "pouch" (it's on the left side of the collage). Click here to see a larger version of the collage I made from various newspaper clippings and xeroxes. Read the St. Petersburg Times Article about it below:
MATILDA'S NEW MOM
St. Petersburg Times; St. Petersburg, Fla.; Apr 1, 2002; BABITA PERSAUD;
Abstract:
[MATILDA], an Eastern Grey Kangaroo who is about 6 months old, reaches out for a kiss from her surrogate mother [Tracy Conley], 41, at Conley's home in New Tampa.; Matilda sits snuggled up in her man-made pouch.; racy Conley takes a bowl of crickets to; an aquarium of tree frogs at the zoo. Conley carries the baby kangaroo Matilda around all day in her man-made pouch.; Baby kangaroo Matilda peeks out of her pouch near her new mother, Tracy Conley.; Chart details the stages of kangaroo development; from newborn to the time the kangaroo leaves the pouch. Includes drawings of a newborn kangaroo in a spoon, a mother kangaroo, an inside view of the newborn latching to a teat inside the mother's pouch and the face of a young kangaroo.; Photo: PHOTO, JOHN PENDYGRAFT, (4); CHART, TERESANNE COSETTA
Full Text:
Copyright Times Publishing Co. Apr 1, 2002
Tracy Conley takes the baby everywhere - to Kash n' Karry and Target, to her son's show and tell, to work.
She even took it to Catholic Mass.
That Sunday, the baby was tucked deep inside a floral pouch. The priest made a sign of the cross over it. Puzzled, a fellow parishioner asked Conley to see the baby.
So Conley untied the cotton satchel that hung around her waist like an apron and flipped open the fleece-lined flap.
Baby revealed: A tiny kangaroo named Matilda.
She is a healthy, 6-month-old Eastern Grey Kangaroo, with eyes like black beads and long narrow ears like oak leaves. She is boney as a chihuahua, weighing in at slightly less than a pound.
Adopted mom Conley, who carries Matilda around all day in the pouch at her waist, is a veterinarian technician at Lowry Park Zoo, where these days they refer to her as Mama Roo.
In the natural order of things, the infant marsupial should be carried in a mother kangaroo's pouch, completing the final and important stages of development. But that was before Feb. 20, when Matilda's mother, who lives on a private wildlife ranch in Ocala, dropped her baby on a clump of leaves.
The mother kangaroo might have behaved that way because she was upset that humans were near. Conley and other zookeepers were there collecting animals for a soon-to-open Australian exhibit at Lowry Park.
Nervous, the mother probably relaxed her abdomen muscles, said Conley, and the joey - the name for a baby kangaroo - slipped out. The condition, known as Disappearing Pouch Syndrome, is common.
The mother wouldn't have returned to save the babe, experts say. Because mother kangaroos are fertile like rabbits and reproduce often, it isn't uncommon for one to abandon a fallen baby.
Still, Conley felt responsible. She felt the tug of heartstrings, too.
"Can you imagine, one second being snug and tucked in mommy's pouch and then next, landing in a pile of leaves and then being picked up and carried in a cat carrier and a bunch of towels and wondering, 'What happened? Where am I?' " she said.
A mother of three human children, ages 8, 12 and 14, Conley has kept lame baby birds, orphaned infant opossums and tiny squirrels in her Hunter's Green suburban home. She adopted an abandoned one-eyed cat she named Peekaboo.
She decided she could handle an abandoned kangaroo, too.
"I feel lucky," Conley, 41, said.
In Australia, wildlife rehab workers routinely care for joeys when their mothers have been hit and killed by cars. At Lowry Park, the experience is new. Conley turned to staff veterinarian David Murphy for postnatal advice.
The first order of business: create a pouch. It had to be warm and have bouncy suspension just like the natural environment. Try a satchel, suggested the doctor.
Conley turned to her mother, Marilyn Kelly, 67, who knows how to sew. They made a mad dash to Wal-Mart for fabric and fleece.
"Making a teddy bear?" asked the cashier.
"No," said Kelly. "I'm sewing for a kangaroo."
The first few nights were "just like having an infant," Conley said. Conley was up all night. Matilda was weak, but she was a fighter.
Matilda is fed special puppy formula milk mixed with canola oil and water every three hours, six times a day. Sometimes she has a milk mustache. Her last feeding comes at 11:45 p.m., from a baby's bottle administered in an oak rocking chair, the same chair Conley used to nurse her three kids.
Conley stops short of grooming Matilda, which a mother kangaroo does with her tongue.
Matilda is then placed in a special suspension incubator for the night. She sleeps in a sling that hangs from slits in the top.
On a recent day, Matilda crawled into the floral pouch at Conley's waist by herself, rolling headfirst. "We were all very excited," Conley said.
Soon, Matilda will start to sit up in the pouch, head sticking out. She will be pouch-bound for about two more months as she doubles in size. Then, she will be introduced to the ground and grass, using the pouch occasionally for another year.
In six months, Matilda will be introduced to other kangaroos at the zoo. She will likely be on the small side, but her chances for survival are good, the zoo vets say.
Conley hopes that eventually Matilda will be the friendliest kangaroo in Lowry's Wallaroo petting zoo when it opens in a few months.
She kisses Matilda between her ears. Looks into her dark eyes. Matilda looks back, chirps lightly.
Conley's friends tease her: "You'll be hopping next."
Says Mama Roo: "If it would help Matilda's development, I would."
Inset: Raising Matilda
An Eastern Grey Kangaroo
Newborn
A newborn kangaroo is more helpless than a human baby. Blind and the size of a honeybee, the newborn "joey" is essentially a fetus, still enclosed in a baglike amnion. It stays there for a gestation period of about 36 days (for Eastern Grey Kangaroo). The embryos of marsupials only spend a short time inside the uterus of their mother.
Pouch time
Then, comes pouch time. Somehow, the tiny creature bursts out of the amnion. It immediately "swims" through its mother's fur to reach the pouch. In just three minutes, it disappears over the lip of the pouch. To find its way, the joey uses its sense of smell and built- in gravity receptors (located in the middle ear) - the only two senses that are functional at this point.
Latches on
When it finds a nipple, the joey latches on and stays physically fused for four to five weeks.
Leaves the pouch
The young stays in the pouch for 9 more months, when it will start leaving the pouch for short periods. It continues to be suckled from the same teat until it is 18 months of age.
Source: Lowry Park Zoo [Illustration]
Caption: Matilda, an Eastern Grey Kangaroo who is about 6 months old, reaches out for a kiss from her surrogate mother Tracy Conley, 41, at Conley's home in New Tampa.; Matilda sits snuggled up in her man-made pouch.; racy Conley takes a bowl of crickets to; an aquarium of tree frogs at the zoo. Conley carries the baby kangaroo Matilda around all day in her man-made pouch.; Baby kangaroo Matilda peeks out of her pouch near her new mother, Tracy Conley.; Chart details the stages of kangaroo development; from newborn to the time the kangaroo leaves the pouch. Includes drawings of a newborn kangaroo in a spoon, a mother kangaroo, an inside view of the newborn latching to a teat inside the mother's pouch and the face of a young kangaroo.; Photo: PHOTO, JOHN PENDYGRAFT, (4); CHART, TERESANNE COSETTA
