Paws for thought: drivers warned to look out for animal stowaways
Motorists are being urged to be vigilant after two reports of animals becoming trapped under vehicles on opposite sides of the world.
In Australia, a koala survived a 16km (10 mile) trip clinging to the axle of a four-wheel drive vehicle before the driver stopped and heard the cries of the traumatised animal.
The female koala had crawled into the wheel arch while the car was parked in the hills on the outskirts of Adelaide, the state capital of South Australia.
The fire brigade was eventually called to take the wheel off to help a wildlife rescue worker free the animal.
“I could smell her burnt fur,” said Jane Brister, from Fauna Rescue. “It would have been hot in there.”
Although the koala was uninjured, Brister said the animal was a lactating mother, which meant her joey, or infant, was missing.
“I searched that night and the next day, and the next, but I never found it,” she said. After a couple of days of feeding in captivity, Brister released the koala back into the wild.
Koalas, often inaccurately described as bears, are marsupials – an order of mammals whose young are suckled in a pouch.
The koala was listed as a vulnerable species under an Australian conservation law in 2012. There are fewer than 100,000 of the animals in the wild, and perhaps even as few as 43,000, according to Australian Koala Foundation estimates.
Earlier this week, three kittens remarkably survived a 311 mile journey stowed away under the bonnet of a car after hitching a ride from the Netherlands to the UK.
The trio – named Edam, Gouda and Tulip by rescuers – were discovered after Christian Lampkin and his family had driven from a holiday park in Eindhoven to Bracknell, Berkshire.
Two days after arriving home, Lampkin heard meowing and looked under the bonnet, where he found the kittens.
“I had a look under the bonnet, there were two cats there, but they shot back into the engine,” he said. When Lampkin called mechanics to get the cats out of the car, they found a third kitten hidden inside.
The family took them to the Diana Brimblecombe Animal Rescue Centre in Reading, which has since raised funds through a crowdfunding website to cover the costs of quarantine.
A spokesman for the centre said: “When they brought them to us, we had to inform the authorities, who promptly told us that unless either we or the ‘importers’ agreed to cover the quarantine costs, these sweet kitty babies would have to be put to sleep.
“As we couldn’t allow that to happen, we’ve worked with the authorities and the kittens are now in quarantine for the next few weeks.”
The kittens and the koala are not the only animals to have been caught under cars. In April this year, a puppy made the news after it got stuck in an exhaust pipe in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand.
The dog had got stuck after crawling into the entrance of the pipe, getting wedged in the resonator section and had to be cut free by rescuers.
In January, a cat got stuck in a car exhaust for 12 hours before being freed by mechanics. The cat’s owner later said: “It is a miracle she is OK. She is acting like nothing happened but is loving all the attention.”
Luke Bosdet, a spokesman for the AA, said while there isn’t much drivers can do to prevent animals becoming trapped under cars, they could be vigilant for unusual sounds.
He said: “No one would expect an animal to be under their car. It is very very rare. Fortunately, there is space under cars but it is a mini-miracle that these animals survived as many animals wouldn’t survive the journey or be noticed.
“The first indication might be the sound of them crying or a scratching sound and be extra vigilant when you go to the countryside,” Bosdet said. “There isn’t much else you can do to prevent it happening.”
It is far more common for pets to become trapped in people’s garages or for wild animals to damage parked vehicles than animals to be trapped in this manner, he added.