Koala cheats death
A koala that cheated death after being hit by a car at 100 kilometers per hour and dragged with his head jammed through the vehicle grille for 12 km is being dubbed Australia's luckiest marsupial.
The eight-year-old male koala, named Ely Lucky Grills by rescuers, was struck by an unwitting motorist north of Brisbane and found only when the car stopped after being flagged down by another vehicle.
Lucky was found with his bottom sticking out of the grille of a woman's car after she pulled up at a station on the outskirts of Brisbane.
"To have him survive and virtually unscathed is quite miraculous," Australian Wildlife Hospital spokewoman Carolyn Beaton said yesterday. Lucky hung on during his ordeal with one arm and his trapped head, and was freed with household scissors used like a fireman's "jaws of life" to cut around the car's mesh grille, Beaton said.
Lucky will stay at the hospital, set up by the late television wildlife and crocodile crusader Steve Irwin, for 45 days to recover and receive treatment.