animagimoments

YES, there are kangaroos and koalas here, and YES, they are cute ... but there are so many other animals, too!

The first creature that made me do a double take was the ibis, which I found several of wandering around Wynyard Park while trying to find my bus. Basically, it's their beaks: they're long. They're actually very long and very thin and look like someone grabbed the bird by its beak with a pair of pliers and pulled. Ouch.

The second animal that made me do a double take was another bird: the cockatoo. It's not that cockatoos are so odd-looking (they're gorgeous birds), but that it was flying around of its own accord. I'm not exactly proud, but my first thought was, "but who feeds it?"

While we're on the bird theme, let me also just mention the rainbow lorikeet, the kookaburra, the pelican and the fairy penguin. The lorikeet can be a noisy little bird when it wants (it usually does), but it's got so many pretty colors combined in one small area I find it quite easy to forgive its happy outbursts. Goodness knows I'd be making noise if I suddenly turned green and red and yellow and blue, too!

The kookaburra, of old gum tree fame, is a fairly standard bird, by Australian standards. It is known for its laugh, though I like it most just for its name, which Merryn tells me I say funny because of my American accent. Same goes for the emu, the national bird, but after seeing them up close, I can’t claim to be much of an emu fan.

As for the pelican -- I had no idea how big they were. I thought I'd seen some in St. James' Park in London, but the ones at Collaroy Beach here were nearly twice their body size and four times their beak size. They didn't do much, but they certainly were impressive.

The fairy penguins, though -- can I get a collective awww? -- are eat-them-up adorable. They wander in from the Tasman Sea every night -- in groups, for safety, the little dears. They waddle from the water to their burrows, cooing to each other as they go. You just don't get more adorable.

It's not just the birds, though. The mammals are pretty amazing, too.

I have a soft spot for wombats, having personally been one for a brief while one afternoon, but that's another story. They're cute, seemingly cuddly critters who don't strike you as the most witty of dinner companions. They're more the sort you want to stand up for and defend when the other animals make fun of them, poor precious things.

The wallabies are smaller versions of kangaroos, and much more manageable in groups than their larger cousins; dingoes are the exotic wild dogs; and Tasmanian devils are the spinning tops of the mammal kingdom. It's not just the cartoon, they really are. My friend Holly and I watched one at a wildlife park for ages and it never stopped running in circles. We eventually gave up waiting for it to stop.

The one animal I still haven't managed to see here is the platypus, and I really want to. Evidently they're very shy, well-hidden animals, but I thought I could depend on Taronga Zoo to show me one, since it features so prominently on all the road signs directing you there. And I could have, if they hadn't put it to bed before I made it to the exhibit.

I know Australia's famous for being home of numerous poisonous, deadly and otherwise annoying fauna, but really, it seems to me that they get more than their fair share of press. Sure, you don't go swimming in crocodile-invested areas in the Northern Territories or cozy up to a friendly funnel-web, but you don't drop dead just by stepping off the plane at Sydney Kingsford Smith. There's plenty of people here who are still alive, trust me.

I will say, though, that my higher creepy-crawly tolerance has risen since coming. Little lizards, ants and spiders don't phase me nearly as much as before (a debatable tolerance level, I know), though the saturated dead mouse was still pushing things. Then again, I could have found that in America.

Despite Australia's diversity of creatures, though, you still can't find everything, including some seemingly common critters I thought were nearly everywhere -- squirrels, chipmunks, skunks, wolves, coyotes, robins, cardinals and bluejays, for example. I was also surpised to go to the Royal Easter Show and the zoo and see deer -- cute fawns, especially, but the concept of a deer was actually a relatively exotic one. And, as my flatmate has helpfully added (she's been helping me with the accuracy of my list), they haven't got bears, either.

To close with the cute, though, I will return to the infinitely adorable koala, which I have actually had the extremely rare experience of seeing up close and personal in the wild near the Great Ocean Road. Not only did I see it -- I actually got to climb the tree and sit on the same branch with it. Now, there's an Australian experience!