Koalas might look like cute and cuddly creatures, but they have sharp teeth and extremely sharp claws that can cause significant harm if threatened or aggravated.
So when one Australian man spotted one on his porch this past weekend, he planned on giving it some space. However, he noticed it looked distressed and decided to get a closer look to see if it was injured. “I was just wandering out to have some breakfast early in the morning and I saw a koala on the porch,” Bruce Atkinson said. “It wandered up, which is not unusual … but this one looked a bit distraught, it was just sitting there all glum.”
“I went out to take a photo of it and noticed all these burrs all over it,” Atkinson said. “I grabbed a bowl of water and put it near it and it immediately got swatted out of my hand.” He figured the prickly plant that covered most of her body must have been the cause of her discomfort and went back inside, put on motorbike gloves, and got a hairbrush.
At first, Atkinson was afraid the koala would attack him and slowly let the koala sniff the brush first. “I just gently poked the brush at some of the burrs,” he said. “Within seconds it decided, ‘this is alright, I’ll have more of this’.” For the next half an hour, Atkinson gently brushed all the burrs out of her fur. “It just sat there and lapped it up.”
“I could also just go up to it, sit down beside it, tickle it under its chin and pat it on its head like a cat,” said Atkinson, who was stunned when the appreciative wild animal hung around the house for the rest of the day. “I was just amazed that the koala seemed smart enough to realize that I was trying to help him and I could not believe how quickly he went from being agro to letting me pet and tickle under chin.”
Watch the entire video below to see the amazing moment this man bonds with a koala who needed help.
What would you do if you saw an animal covered in prickles? Let us know what you think in the comments below and please SHARE this with friends on Facebook.
[Featured image: Facebook/Bruce Atkinson]
Man Helps Distressed Koala Covered In Painful Prickles is an article from: LifeDaily