There’s at least one animal from Australia that won’t poison you or bite you in half and it is as durable as it is cuddly. This koala, a lactating mother, rode in this car’s wheel well for 10 miles. It must have been very stressful.
The unidentified driver of the car didn’t notice anything until he started hearing “crying,” which is when he stopped and discovered the animal. He also called for help. Firefighters showed up and took a wheel off in the course of the rescue.
The koala had apparently crawled in there while the car, which The Advertiser describes as a “4WD,” meaning, probably, an SUV, was parked.
From The Guardian’s report on it, which takes a dark turn:
“I could smell her burnt fur,” said Jane Brister, from Fauna Rescue. “It would have been hot in there.”
Although the koala was uninjured, Brister said the animal was a lactating mother, which meant her joey, or infant, was missing.
“I searched that night and the next day, and the next, but I never found it,” she said. After a couple of days of feeding in captivity, Brister released the koala back into the wild.
Sheesh! We’re glad the mother survived, though, in what turned out to be a very bad ride.
(Correction: This post originally stated that the koala was stuck in the car for 10 hours, when, in fact, it was 10 miles. The headline has also been changed to be more accurate.)