Possums in the Roof, Koalas in Bed: Animals Find New Homes in Australian Houses

Animals in Australia now live in houses. Trees and bushes disappear. Animals lose their homes. People cut down trees. They build new buildings. Animals need places to go. They find our homes. They move into our roofs. They live inside our walls. They stay in our garages. Sometimes they sit on our beds. Native animals lose their wild places. People build houses on their land. Animals have nowhere else to go. They look for new places to sleep. Our houses give them shelter.

Researchers studied ten years of reports. They looked at 2,400 cases. They found animals in buildings. Possums were the most common. Half of all cases were possums. Microbats and wombats were also inside. Most animals stayed in roof spaces. Some lived in walls. Some hid in garages. A few went into letterboxes. Some even went into air conditioning. About 10% were found in bedrooms. People often did not know. They thought these were rare events. But they happen all the time.

Animals use every part of our houses. A woman in Melbourne found baby sugar gliders under her sink. She reached for a dishwashing tablet. Her hand touched something soft. It was baby gliders in a small jar. Rescuers found five more gliders there. A koala once walked into a house. It went down the hallway. It sat on the bed. Microbats come into roofs very often. A family was renovating their house. They found eight little forest bats in the wall. Ericka Tudhope works with microbats. She says bats in roofs are normal. People should leave them alone.

Sources: theguardian.com