A heartwarming video shows the moment an Australian woman rescues a baby kangaroo from the pouch of its dead mother.
32-year-old Lauren Wager was going home with her friend, Sarah Wragge, when the pair spotted a kangaroo lying beside a road.
The friends, from Thebarton, Australia, were returning from McLaren Vale when they spotted the animal on the side of the Seaview Road in Adelaide about 4pm on Sunday, August 19.
When the women stopped to check the animal, they realized that it had died after getting hit by a car. Upon a closer look, they found that the kangaroo was not alone and had a small joey inside its pouch.
“I swear I saw it move, so we chucked a U-turn and drove past it slowly and it was definitely moving,” Wager told the Adelaide Advertiser.
“It was quite obviously kicking in the tummy and I got out and had a look and saw two little feet sticking out of its pouch.”
After a bit of investigation, the women came to know that the joey was still alive inside the mother roo’s pouch and, hence, decided to bring it out.
The baby kangaroo, later named Jannick, was too scared to come out of its mother’s pouch, and the kindhearted women had to use her both hands for pulling it out.
“It made like a little crying noise when I was trying to get him,” she said. “I had to be gentle because it was pretty tightly packed in there.
“It was hard to get it out — I got both my hands in there and put it around the whole joey.”
Jannick was then wrapped in a towel and transported to Sibylle Kaufmann, a fauna rescue expert, in Happy Valley.
The baby kangaroo was just 7 months old and weighed around 1.2 kilograms (2.6 pounds). It was put to be nursed in an artificial pouch.
Jannick will be integrated with other kangaroos after it gains enough strength to live on its own. As of now, the little guy is doing great – thanks to the kindhearted women!