Blink was born with one eye and was found injured as a baby. It is likely she was either 'deposed' by a sibling, or her mum was attacked by another possum or cat and Blink was left to fend for herself.
Blink was found by a member of the public [like many of our rescues] and our friend S. took her to our local vet. As mentioned previously some vets will work on native animals 'pro-bono' only charging a nominal fee for medicines or x-rays etc [It's always best to check 1st though]
S initially thought she would be handing Blink over for euthanasia, however on examination the wound appeared superficial, but once checked out, the vet suggested stitching up the wound and giving her a chance as in his opinion if she was born one eyed, she would have a better chance of surviving than if she'd had 2 eyes then lost one later.
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| Blink |
S readily agreed to have him patch up Blink and then took her home to provided post op care, keeping the closed wound clean and feeding antibiotics to her with her formula, as well as plenty of love and attention. After several weeks Blink was handed on to us to care for. We'd had a bad run, losing several possums too badly injured to survive, including one that came to us on Christmas eve... a little fellow called Nick, whose mum was either poisoned or had a kidney disease, he'd lasted a few days then passed away probably from whatever killed his mum. It made Christmas a sad occasion this year, so the opportunity to care for one with even a half chance of survival was jumped at.
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| Nick |
My wife took over nursing duties and after a while the stitches in Blink's flank were removed. At this stage we were still unsure if Blink would survive, as she seemed to have difficulty using her back legs, dragging them behind her and was very uncoordinated with her impaired vision.
Over a period of several weeks, my wife began physio with Blink, working her hind legs, giving her back massages, getting her to grab food, placing her on branches in the aviary and catching her as she invariably fell off again. Many a time my wife would come back into the house in tears, Blink having failed a simple climb or traverse of a branch, we worried that she'd need to be put to sleep.
If Blink didn't improve soon, we would have to make a hard decision and take her for euthanasia, because she wouldn't be able to survive if she couldn't walk and climb on her own. It's a decision we didn't want to make, as she''d shown she was a real fighter to have gotten that far. Within weeks we would need to put Blink and her new buddy TJ, outside in a large aviary. This would be the last chance for her. If she could not get around in the aviary, she had to go to the vets!
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| TJ and Blink |
Then success! Blink began getting the hang of.. well, hanging on. She was not as strong or agile as we'd like, but perhaps, just perhaps she'd improve some more now. We put up extra branches and out to the aviary go TJ & Blink with plenty of soft leaf mulch on the ground, just in case Blink falls! At first Blink was reluctant to move off the shelf where their nesting box is placed, but over time she's realised she can get around and reach those juicy leaves and pieces of fruit, dotted around the aviary.
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| Blink on the shelf. |
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| Finally climbing for leaves. |
There's still a few months before they move onto the larger enclosures where they'll spend the rest of their lives and we see daily little improvements in Blink's movement. She's still a little uncoordinated and will never be as fast or agile as her buddy, TJ. But this is one little possum that has beaten the odds and will survive to a ripe old age when she could as easily have not made it past a few months.
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| Success, Blink gets to the juicy stuff! |
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| TJ having a feed too. |
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