SCOTT Patterson has played “mum” to thousands of injured native animals at the wildlife shelter in his Mill Park home. But there is one critter closest to his heart. It is the joey he found standing by its mother, whose legs were trapped in a barbed wire fence in Epping.
“The little one was calling out to her mum and trying to climb back into her pouch but the mother was trapped upside down,” he said.
“She was my first eastern grey kangaroo, and once you raise one there’s nothing like it, they bond with you. They learn from you. Violet, as we called her, had just opened her eyes when we found her and she took to me as her mum.
“She’d follow me around the backyard and come to work at the Diamond Valley Veterinary Hospital.”
Violet was released into a mob of roos in the bush a few years ago, and Mr Patterson still sees her.
Patterson’s passion for animal care began at the age of 12 when he found an orphaned possum on the roadside and nursed it back to health.
“I have always been passionate about wildlife rehabilitation,” said the 24-year-old veterinary nurse who set up the Katandra Wildlife Shelter at home 10 years ago.
“My mum and dad supported me to set up the shelter. There’s the cost of food like special baby (wildlife) formulas and fruit and electricity, and raising a joey costs $1000 a year and a possum is about $150 a year, but when you care for up to 40 orphaned baby possums at a time, it adds up.”
He blamed cats for many injuries to wildlife. “Cats’ teeth are sharp and full of bacteria and puncture the little organs inside animals like baby possums, and 98 per cent of cat attack victims die,” he said.
Mr Patterson, the City of Whittlesea’s 2008 Young Citizen of the Year, has cared for all kinds of animals. The green tree frogs “hitch hike” rides with fruit from Queensland and cannot be released into Victoria’s bush, so are the shelter’s permanent residents.
