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When you work from home, you get used to working by yourself. So the other day, when an Australian man entered his office shed and found someone was already inside, he was taken aback.
Staring directly at the man was someone he never expected to see up close, let alone in his office: a koala. Unsure what to do, the man reached out to his neighbor for help, who called WIRES, a wildlife rescue organization.
“The resident who reported the koala to WIRES was definitely shocked,” Jayden Kolic-Clarke, WIRES animal rescuer, told The Dodo. “He said that never in the 30 years that he had lived there had he ever seen or been so up close to this magnificent species.”
Everyone was puzzled as to how the marsupial had ended up inside the office. But according to Kolic-Clarke, koalas find themselves in these unusual predicaments more often than you might expect.
“During my time rescuing Australian native wildlife, I have seen it all — from koalas on highways and on active airport runways to them being chased up power poles,” Kolic-Clarke said.
For whatever reason, this particular koala was determined to infiltrate a home office.
“He was definitely a bit far from home,” Kolic-Clarke said. “We assume it wandered down the driveway and under the fence, went through an open garage door, under a bus converted into a tiny home and then went into the office at the back of the house.”
Even though the koala wasn’t in any immediate danger, the WIRES rescuer decided to take him into their facility to make sure he was in good shape before releasing him into his natural habitat.
“I was glad to see it go somewhere where it could be health-checked and then put back somewhere appropriate,” the person who called WIRES told The Dodo.
At the WIRES facility, they nicknamed the koala Paddy and got him comfortable.
“[H]e’s doing very well — definitely a lot happier than that stressful situation in a home office,” Kolic-Clarke said.
As soon as Paddy is cleared by the vet, he’ll be all set to return to the eucalyptus trees he calls home.
