Ellen and I came home yesterday, have been trapping near Portland for the last 5 days. Trapping was good, lots of animals but a bit wet. A horrible thing happened on Wednesday, we ran over two Eastern grey kangaroos which came out of nowhere and one of them died :'( Kangaroos are not the wisest animals in the world, a bit like sheep, they wait until the car is coming and then decide they want to hop across the road. One of the kangaroo seemed to be okay because it jumped away after the crash, but the other one had a broken leg. It crawled around and we were so upset to see it looking at us in pain. We had no idea what to do so we drove to the nearest farmer to ask if they had a riffle to kill it. The woman in the farm had a riffle but was not confident in using it and her husband was not at home so we drove back to the kangaroo and then it was already dead. It probably had severe internal injuries and it also may have died from the shock. Just horrible and we felt so bad, but at least it did not suffer for long. We had to drive past it every day for four days. We also had to drive past a dead Echidna every day and in the house we stayed in there was a dead bat. It was still fresh so we put it in the freezer and took it back with us, very cute little thing, too bad it was dead though. So a lot of dead things around us these days, but luckily no trap deaths, just one bush rat that somehow got out of the trap but got its tail stuck in the door and was stuck until I came... poor thing but it was alive. We caught Swamp Antechinus (A. minimus) and it was the first time it was found in that area so that is really good news, three big males. One did not like being photograph and gave me some nasty bites and scratches, but hey that's okay, just few bites between friends :) . And the best thing is that no ticks managed to get stuck on me, I saw one crawling on my bag though... yakk. We also had to do a lot of vedge work (describe vegetation and find main species) and then I heard a familiar sound, drums drums... and two big EMU'S came running. I looove emus, they are my favourite bird, it is so funny to see them run. And the sound they make is like someone is playing drums. Lovely emus :)
The house was quite good, lots of creepy crawlers though, a big huntsman waiting for me near my bed...
Happy summer in Iceland, Gledilegt sumar :)