Last Wednesday afternoon a call came through to the Australian Wildlife Hospital regarding a seriously injured female Blue Tongue lizard. A motorist noticed the lizard moving slowly across the road and pulled her car off to the side of the road so she could run back and “shoo” the lizard away from danger.

Unfortunately the driver of the car following was not as vigilant and the female Blue Tongue lizard was actually run over and her babies were scattered on the road where she lay. All babies were about two weeks off being born naturally, so they were all premature and many were also badly injured. The first motorist placed all the injured lizards in a t-shirt and rushed home to phone the Australian Wildlife Hospital for help.

However, when the rescuer arrived to collect the patients, the mother lizard had already died, but there was hope for some of her babies.

On assessment Dr Claude pronounced eight babies to be deceased, two needed to be euthanized as their injuries were too severe and the remaining five were set up in intensive care. I am pleased to report this week the baby blue tongues are now quite active, all are feeding and drinking well and all should be ok for release in a couple of weeks.

Call the Australian Wildlife Hospital on 1300 365 652 for all wildlife emergencies.

 

This entry was posted on Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 5:11 pm and is filed under Wildlife Warriors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.