I love the Aussie spirit. And sorrow for their travail. That’s not near enough to say about either… but then there’s this out of nowhere….

In the Australian fires where 180 people are reported dead, there is an ordinary man, 44 year old firefighter named Mr. Dave Tree.

Tree was walking amongst the dead black tree trunks… all that are left of the once lush forest nearby to Canberra.

Mr. Tree in his walkabout, dressed in his baggy yellow duct-taped fire duds, came across Little Girl, who might normally run into the vegetation and away, away, away.

But there was no vegetation to run to, and so Little Girl, her paws and ankles burnt, just sat down with the saddest look on her face…

thereby signaling as creatures do when they know they are cornered and a predator much stronger and bigger than they has espied them… “I know it’s all over, go ahead, kill me, I submit.”

But, death did not come for sad-eyed Little Girl… because Mr. Tree has some blinking-amazing, strong-tender streak of Francis of Assisi somewhere in him.

Watch and tell us no more that creatures and humans do not have the care of one another…

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CODA
Little Girl, was originally named Sam, for The Tree Man initially thought ‘her was a him.’ Once they brought her to the shelter they found there was another who was rescued, Big Boy, a/k/a Bob, and …

the two koalas have been inseparable since then, lying in each others arms, with seven of their eight legs with second and third degree burns and all bandaged up. I had to rush to read ahead on the news feed to the end… Whew, yes, the shelter workers aver, both these little ones will recover in several month’s time.

Tree man’s friend, Brayden Groen, 20 years old, took the film with his cell phone. Tree Man’s been a firefighter for 26 years and says it is rare to get close to a koala. True: they are defensive, have a snarly sound and long sharp claws…

but when Tree Man held the water bottle for her and Little Girl drank so gratefully, she put her paw on Tree Man’s hand… which was cold. He said he hoped the cold comforted her burns a little bit. That’s what he hoped.

Sometimes hope comes too in the most startling ways. The workers and volunteers at Southern Ash Wildlife Shelter in Rawson say slowly the wallabys, possums, and kangaroos are emerging from the debris, bewildered and in need too, wandering down roads with parts and paws and pelts burnt, lungs hurting, eyes injured.

You just know there are human beings who are doing creatural search and rescue as we speak, no matter what harms have already come to those very humans.

“The Lost Story” part
There’s an amazing phenomenon I’ve noticed over the decades of doing dream analysis: as the most familiar creatural species of our world have been depleted and extincted, those creatures– bears, wolves, raptors, elephants, and so many others– also begin to disappear from the dream world. Children no longer seem to dream the great animals as much as they now dream glittering metal striding, and other confabulations that come from being written upon by video games, television and film and the internet.

All the more reason those who shelter the creatures are special blessed. They may be helping to keep the dream animals alive also.