Okay, seriously, I want a koala.

On Friday our class took a field trip to the Healesville Sanctuary, an animal rehabilitation zoo. While I’ve seen most of these animals before, it was still a fun day.

First, we got a special talk with one of the zookeepers. He brought out a snake (above) and let all of us touch it. He showed us this double-headed lizard, whose tail looks like a head to try to confuse its predators (above). He brought out this sugar glider (above), a little squirrel-like thing that glides through the air using its extra skin as a parachute. We didn’t see it glide, but we got to pet it, and boy was it fuzzy.

Then we saw a birds of prey flying extravaganza. We saw this buzzard who has evolved to use a stone to break open an emu egg (above). It’s one of two bird species in the world that has learned how to use a tool to eat their food. There was an owl, who flew really close to all of the audience members. It has crazy eyes (above). I love owls, but that dude looked pretty scary.

We walked around the whole zoo, and saw some cool animals. We saw flying foxes (above), which looked pretty much like bats to me. I saw some kangaroos hugging (above), and a wombat that was quite large (above) but not as big as the one who sat on my lap in Perth. I also saw these cool birds, I’m not sure what they’re called but I nicknamed them Platy-birds since they have platypus bills (above). I did see some real platypuses, but the display was too dark to take any decent pictures. I’ve added them to my list of “animals that should not exist” because they are so bizarre looking, they look like something from science fiction (above, from website).

Then we got to my favorite part, the koala exhibit. I was really lucky, because two of them were awake and crawling around on tree branches. Since koalas sleep for 20 hours a day, it was great luck to see two of them awake and being active. The zookeeper talked about how they have pads of fat on their butts so that they can sleep all day comfortably (above, look at that fuzzy butt!). They were very hungry when I saw them, but very lazy in how they got their food. They tried to keep their butt planted, so they would stretch their necks as far as possible to get to the eucalyptus leaves (above). Then, if they determined that they actually had to move, they moved about the branches like really slow monkeys (above). It was hard to tear myself away from the koalas, because they are just so cute and soft and fuzzy (above).

46 days until my birthday, so there’s still plenty of time for you to secure a koala for me. Just putting that out there.