Koalas

I've always been an animal lover but my alltime favourite animal has to be koala,  i love koalas - they're so cute.  

The first time i ever saw a koala was on a British nature series which were filmed at London zoo and hosted by Chris Pachem.    There was also a documentary called King Koala which helped fuel my interest in them,   I remember that there was a male koala named Arnie (after Arnold Scwartzenegger)  and a female koala named Lulu,   and Arnie was competing with this other male koala named Dennis to see who would end up wining Lulu's heart.    Both of them were rescued and looked after by the RSPCA or some other animal rescue organisation.  

I have a brown koala plushie named Lulu -  it was something my beloved nana gave me along with the panda my dad gave me and the little ladybug that would wind up being named Doizee but then named Doizee Jr later on after I purchased that ladybug backpack from Spain.   My old friend Kirsty and I used to play with our koala plushies quite a bit -   hers was named Kiki and she served as the best friend of Lulu (my  koala plushie),   one of the running gags is that i would make Lulu do a silly dance then yell..."Lulu's being silly!"  to which mom or dad would jokingly respond..."Don't be silly,  Lulu."

Being both koala lovers and beanie collectors,  our favorite beanie baby was definitely Mel the koala,  in fact Mel was the first beanie i ever got.    And once i got Eucalpytus -   the two of them immediately became best friends forever.    And when we played with them -  we  often have them acting like boy-crazy teenage girls,  a running gag is that both of them would start chasing any male that came in their direction and yelping..."Elelelellelllel!" before exclaimining..."Boyfriend!"  and kissing their new boyfriends of choice.    I call Mel a she because even though the poem on the tag refers to her as being a male and being named Mel Gibson -   I felt she was more feminine than masculine -   same with Eucalpytus.

One of the children's books i read at a young age had koalas in it,    it was one of the Animal Rescue books -  titled Koala In A Crisis this one was about a girl who helped a stray koala.

I've got many koala related toys and books including several plushes and also a pair of home made koala ears,  i also have the Billabong family which are from the Sylvanian Families range and are a family of koalas.

I used to love the Yowie chocolates,   in fact i first discovered them while on Wahiki Island in New Zealand,  there was a book about one of the Yowie characters -   the particular Yowie character featured in the book was  Nap the honeygum yowie,   he looked a bit like a koala and he lived up in the gum trees.    I had almost all of the animal toys all except the koala one -  no matter how many Yowies my dad bought for me -  it was almost impossible to get the koala,   that is until one day when i got lucky -   now in the Yowie commercial they showed the Bandicoot-like yowie character Boof in his chocolate form and the koala came out of the capsule,  ironically I did not find the toy in that very same Yowie -   i found him in the platypus-like one.

Back when i had all the Puppy In My Pocket type toys,   there was one set i stumbled upon in the toy department at Tesco's -   it was one of the koala family consisting of the mama koala and her children and it came with the treehouse.    After buying it and paying for it -  i took the set home and play with it,  all was happy until that unfortunate thing that happened at bathtime,   when the plug got pulled out -  one of the koala babies got sucked down the plughole and down into the drain where he/she was unfortunately never seen or heard from again.     This  isn't the first time it's happened either,   much earlier -  on a cruise across the River Thames -  one of my Kitten In My Pocket figurines fell right into the river.

I have the Blinky Bill CD Rom games and still play them from time to time,   i used to watch the cartoon series frequently as well.  

The two koala plushies I am frequently seen playing with and cuddling up with are Pookie and Sidney,  now Pookie is an orange TY Pluffie koala  while  Sidney is one i brought from Natures Window.    When I play with them i make it so Pookie is a scientific genius who is working undercover and pretending to be an idiot to trick the bad guys while i make it that Sidney is a complete idiot who can't do anything right and seems to like pickles a lot and will believe almost anything anyone tells him.

I know some pretty amazing facts about koalas.    For instance they sleep almost 22 hours a day,  but they do come out sometimes after sunset.  

Also their name in Aborginal means no-drink,   which means they don't need to drink water to get the nutrients they need  since their main diet of Eucalpytus leaves provides them with the nutrients they need.   And in case you are wondering -  no they are not bears -  people just refer to them as bears because they think they look like them.    The reason they do is to do with when the Europeans first came to Australia -  they saw the koalas and thought they looked like bears -  thus they claimed the koalas were bears and that's why they keep refering to it as a koala bear even though it is not a bear.

Koalas are marsupials which means they are special kind of mammals that live in Australia and have pouches where their young babies or joeys stay until they are old enough to leave on their own -   a koala's pouch opens at the bottom unlike with kangaroos where it opens at the top.   And no -  they do not get drunk or "drugged out"  from eating the leaves.

Also koalas have 4 thumbs on each paw and their fingerprints are almost the same as human fingerprints.

As much as i love koalas,   i have never been up and close to a real one before as i don't live in Australia -  for a while  i wanted one as a pet but upon looking it up recently i  learned that it is illegal to keep them as pets anywhere even in Australia except in the case of zoos and nature reserves.  

  Which is just as well seeing as they could be considered endangered  -  their homes are constantly being destroyed due to bushfires and pretty soon they could end up without any home to live in at all.    Other threats include owls,  dingoes and pythons.    Over 40000 koalas are killed each year by either a car or dog.

Now my dad unfortunately now has the habit of making this one joke about koalas eating people -  specifically Australians -   we all know it isn't true because koalas are folivores and live solely on a diet of Eucalpytus leaves.     I think he must have them confused with their evil counterparts the Dropbears which are described as being large,  vicious carnivorous koalas with sharp teeth that inhabit tree-tops and attack their prey by dropping down onto their heads from above.

I think the odds of koalas eating people to be highly unlikely -   i definitely think dad has them confused with dropbears but not to worry though -  dropbears are just something the Australians make up to frighten tourists.     I don't think we will ever have to worry about koalas of any kind eating people especially  not Australians -  unless of course Peter Jackson decides to return to doing splatter type horror films like the ones he did before he made Lord Of The Rings and fly over to Australia and make a splatter type horror film about killer koalas either killing or eating people using animatronics or something.  

But mind you -  a movie like that would be pretty cool to see though,   it could be sort of like Gremlins or Troll/Troll 2,    they could get Peter Jackson to direct it -  but if PJ's not available  they could get Joe Dante to direct it or Edgar Wright who did Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz -  or maybe they could get Sam Raimi to direct it and give his friend Bruce Campbell a role in it.

Koalas are not only cute,  they're cool and really amazing creatures.    There should be a cartoon series about a group of superhero anthromorphic koalas that fight crime -  something like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles but for the Aussie crowd.