Hope is that thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without words, and never stops at all.
--Emily Dickinson
The world should thank the rescue and rehabilitation crews who have worked so hard to help save all the people and animals they could during Australia's devastating bush fires. The fires wiped out over 40,000 hectares (or nearly 100,000 acres) of land.
Australia's creatures are often unique to that continent--koalas, wombats, wallabies, echidnas, dingoes, Tasmanian Devils and kangaroos to name a few--and their populations have suffered devastating losses. A great number of the surviving animals have lost their habitats. They will need plenty of help moving into new homes.
Many animals who survived the deadly fires have been badly burned. Animal rescuers even found a turtle--still alive--whose shell had melted and fused to her body from the fire's intense heat.
"We've got a wallaby joey at the moment that has crispy fried ears because he stuck his head out of his mum's pouch and lost all his whiskers and cooked up his nose," Wildlife Victoria President Jon Rowdon told the Associated Press news agency in a February 11th article.
Now, zoos and animal shelters in Australia are overwhelmed with injured and recovering animals. Many volunteers are working around the clock to help save them. The video below shows one of many firefighters, who had been out in the brush, performing a famous koala rescue. Koalas are dangerous wild animals who normally do not let humans get near them, but this little gal was so thirsty that she put aside her fear and let the kind fireman give her some water. Rescuers named her "Sam," and she became a symbol of optimism for her entire nation. We wish Sam and all the animals and people of Australia a safe and speedy recovery from this terrible disaster.
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