I Am a Pademelon
– from Wikipedia

What am I? Have you ever seen me before? My name is “Pademelon” but I am no relation to the watermelon, the musk melon, the winter melon, or even the cantaloupe or honeydew. And no, I am not a kangaroo. I am who I am; a Pademelon. Let me explain….

Australian What Am I

I breathe and move and so you know

– from Discoversg.com

My Kingdom’s animalia

I do have fur, and nurse my young

I’m classified mammalia

Be sure to check my infraclass

I am marsupialia

It’s true I have a cozy pouch

And live in warm Australia

But, no, I’m not a kangaroo

– from pademelonpark.com.au

Who shrank inside the dryer

And no, I’m not a wallaby

Who wished she could grow higher

I hop about and graze on grass

And don’t do any yell’in

My fur is gray and reddish brown

I am a pademelon

The critters in DownUnder 

Are so varied and unique

We bounce and pounce, we splash and dash

We twitter, whirr and squeak

Koalas and the kangaroos

May be the most well-known

But Pademelons matter too

And we are not alone

Australia is full of life

Pademelon Joey
– Creative Commons

Strange beasts you’ve never seen

The quokka, quoll and numbat

And a tree ant that is green

A kangaroo found in the trees

The earth-bound walleroo

Yet we agree that none of us

Are quite as strange as you

– by Ruth Gilmore Ingulsrud

Some species of the pademelon are threatened or endangered because of habitat loss and predators that are not native to Australia or Tasmania. The pademelon is a gentle, lovely creature that eats grass, herbs, fruit and mushrooms. Be careful not to confuse the pademelon with the paddymelon which is a small vine fruit that grows in the outback of Australia. Here’s one way to tell the difference: one of them hops and the other rolls.

What is a farmer to do when crops are threatened by a beloved beast that needs protection itself? When elephants threatened to decimate Kenyan crops, farmers came up with a brilliant solution; use bees to chase away the huge mauraders.

Yes, elephants are afraid of something as small as a mouse, but they are also afraid of something even smaller. Elephants are, as it turns out, afraid of bees. Farmers have successfully kept elephants from invading their fields by installing bee hives along the crops’ bordering fences. With their sensitive ears, the elephants can hear they buzzing of the bees and steer clear. If they do venture too close, the bees will swarm and sting the elephants around their eyes and the sensitive ends of their trunks.

Besides keeping the elephants at bay, the busy buzzers help to pollinate the crops. In this way, two threatened species help each other survive and thrive.

For more on this honey of an idea, read the article on ABC’s web site.

Coral Reefs; the Rainforest of the Sea

Coral Reefs

The coral reef, the diverse “rainforest of the sea” is in deep trouble. Coral reefs only cover about one percent of the earth’s surface but yet they are home, habitat and grocery store to twenty-five percent of the ocean’s creatures. Coral is very important, but coral reefs are dying. Human activity is to blame. Destructive fishing that scrapes dredges across the bottom of the sea can destroy an entire coral reef in one fell swoop. Pollution from cars and industry is causing the oceans to warm and changing the waters where coral try to grow. The bleaching of corals happens when the organisms that live inside and with the coral structure start to die. You can see why corals might have a quarrel with us humans.

The Coral’s Quarrel

Boulder Brain Coral Closeup

We, the coral, have a quarrel

With how humans treat the sea

How they heat up our reef waters

Boosting sea acidity

Listen to the coral chorus

As we sing our song of woe

When the ocean waters sicken 

Coral polyps cannot grow

All these years we have been growing

We’ve been building up our reef

Now we watch our home’s destruction  

While the coral sings in grief

Can’t you hear the coral chorus

As we sing our song of woe?

We are losing our bright colors

Coral bones begin to show

Photo by Adam Pender

Symbiotic coral features

Are a vast community

And we’re home to countless creatures

That commune here in the sea

Come and listen to the coral

Sun Coral Closeup

Singing to humanity

You can hear us as we softly

Sing our song to save the sea

                  — Ruth Gilmore Ingulsrud

For more information about coral reefs, please visit Ocean Portal, a site sponsored by the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Link: http://ocean.si.edu/corals-and-coral-reefs

A bat may not be as cute as a button, but like buttons, bats certainly hold things together in a healthy ecosystem. Bats devour millions of mosquitoes every night. Bats pollinate flowers that produce fruit. Bats produce guano, or bat poop, which is very useful as a fertilizer to help grow crops. Without bats, clouds of bugs would drive us batty. Without bats we would miss out on quite a few fruits like mangoes, bananas and peaches.

Bats with White-Nose Fungus

Many species of bats are now seriously endangered. A spreading fungus has wiped out large numbers and bat habitats have been taken over by humans. It’s not easy being a bat.

Going Batty

Minor Epauletted Bat from Kenya

It’s not so easy being me

I’m an endangered bat, you see

Not many think I’m very cute

With stringy wings and fuzzy suit

I should be loved, because I try

Echo-Locating Dinner

To eat the pests that multiply

I nightly dine on bugs that bite

By echo-dining while in flight

The farmers think we bats are great

We help the plants we pollinate

But though we’re popular on farms

Bat Pollinating Flower

Most other folk don’t see our charms

The darling Pandas get the press

Us bats are jealous, we confess

But we work hard from dusk till dawn

The world will miss us when we’re gone

What can we do to help these vulnerable critters? One thing that helps is to build bat houses. Did you know that Batman, from the new movie version, has come to the rescue of bats? The cast and crew of the upcoming movie, “Batman vs. Superman; the Dawn of Justice.” have made over a hundred new bat houses from the materials taken from the movie sets. If you weren’t able to buy one of those houses, you can make your own and give your local bats a place to safely roost. Here is a link to building houses for bats: National Wildlife Federation Bat House Plans

When an animal becomes “critically endangered” there is a real possibility that it may soon become extinct. The Irrawaddy Dolphin is one critter that tragically lands in this critically endangered category. In the Mekong River, where these freshwater dolphins used to thrive, now only about 80 dolphins remain. 

Their numbers decrease as they get tangled up in fishermen’s nets and drown. They are not fish, of course; they are mammals and they need to come up to the surface to breathe. There are other, safer methods to catch fish, but fishermen often want to catch many fish in a very short amount of time. And so they use large nets that capture everything inside, even creatures that the fishermen have no interest in eating or selling…. like Irrawaddy Dolphins.

Irrawaddy Dolphin

These are one of the smallest types of dolphins. They have lovely, smooth skin and charming smiles and are beautiful to watch as they play in the wild. We should be doing all we can to protect these beloved beasts. A “dirge” is a poem sometimes read at a funeral when there is a death. I hope that this “Irrawaddy Dolphin Dirge” might help educate people about this delightful dolphin. Perhaps more dolphin deaths will be avoided.

Irrawaddy Dolphin Dirge

Oh, the world has been quite naughty

To the Dolphin Irrawaddy

These poor creatures get all tangled up in nets

And I think it rather tragic

We can’t rescue them by magic

But we must do something lest the world forgets

When the beasts start disappearing

Then the humans’ end is nearing

And the change depends on you as well as me

If you think it doesn’t matter

This “endangered species” chatter

Then you’re not as smart as you pretend to be

— Ruth Gilmore Ingulsrud

Wisdom, the Laysan Albatross who makes her home-nest on Midway Atoll, has just hatched out another healthy baby chick.  She is the oldest known bird in the world, having been banded when she was about five years old. It is estimated that she has raised over 36 chicks. One of her chicks even survived the March 11, 2011 tsunami that resulted from the disastrous earthquake in Japan.

Wisdom’s story is beautifully told in a book by Darcy Pattison, “Wisdom, the Midway Albatross.” The tsunami on March 11 rushed toward Midway Atoll where Wisdom and thousands of other birds were nesting. About 110,000 baby chick died along with over 2,000 adult birds, but somehow Wisdom and her chick survived.

An albatross has many survival challenges. It must avoid being eaten by sharks as it swoops down to the ocean to scoop up tasty squid. It has to wisely avoid eating the many pieces of plastic floating on the waves. It also has to avoid getting tangled in fishing lines or nets. People can do much to help these beautiful birds survive. We can use safe fishing techniques, clean up the oceans and protect the albatross nesting areas.

We hope that Wisdom will continue to have a long and amazing life. She is an inspiration to us all!