Platypus breeds poetry in motion

Platypus breeds poetry in motion

by Kate Rose

13 may 05

MILLSOM is bending over backwards for a spot in the new platypusary at Healesville Sanctuary.While platypuses are often shy, the tumbling thumb-cruncher stole the limelight from gathered luminaries at the launch of the new building. Golden domes shaped like platypus eggs will shelter the new breeding program, starting in the next few months.

Keeper Adrian Mifsud has been flat out like a platypus swimming to get the enclosure ready for the arrival of Binari, a female platypus from Taronga Zoo in Sydney.

She will be bred with Barak, who was born at Healesville in 1998. Mr Mifsud said if the program was successful it would be the first time a second-generation captive platypus was born.
BHP Billiton is funding the new platypusary.

Mt Dandenong Primary School student Anjali Lobo celebrated the opening of the enclosure with a poem called Secrets of the platypus, which won her a meeting with Millsom.

Pleading men banging on windows

A portly man, either 32, 37, or 42, followed me from the ATM to the building where I work. He wimpered behind me, occasionally saying "please, oh please." He did not follow me inside the building, but stopped on the outside of the glass doors, pushing his nose against them and rubbing it around. He banged on the glass to get my attention, so I turned around and he screamed "HELLO! HELLO!"

"Hello," I said.