Looking out of my window today reminded me of another day just like this one, a day when I was searching for a special blue bird. I thought it had been talking to my grandmother about me.

One day grandmother asked me to buy some bread. On the way home I gave my bread to a black dog. I really wanted to keep her but I knew my mother would not allow.

An idea occurred to me. I got to our back gate, carefully dug a hole under the fence, and left the rest of the bread right at the hole. Then from the front door I went down the drive and through to the backyard. I got there just in time. She was trying to reach the bread at the hole. I held her front paws and pulled her through. She ate up the bread and I was delighted that my idea had worked.

When I got inside, I told my grandmother that my bread was eaten by a stray dog. I was very pleased with myself for not having to lie. We suddenly heard scratching coming from the back door. Seeing her, grandmother asked me, “Where did that come from?” “She must have come in under the gate.” I pointed out the hole under the back gate. Grandmother told me she thought it was I who brought the dog home. I looked at my grandmother’ s face and asked, “How did you know?” She said, “A little bird told me, a little blue bird told me.” I reminded her I had not told a lie. She grinned and said, “No you did not lie. But the truth you told was not the whole story either.”

I spent most of that summer making sure the blue birds stayed out of the yard. I remember watching grandmother giggling a little as she watched me.

Years later I found out that grandmother had been looking out of the breakfast room window and watched me dig the hole, run back into the yard and pull the dog through. She and my mother laughed about it. Anyway, we kept the dog (even after she delivered 13 puppies) until she passed away with snow-white on her snout and around her eyes.

While many people prefer to buy a new dog from a breeder, another option is to adopt a rescue dog. As the Svilicics already had a healthy daughter Charlotte, they felt fortunate enough to save another life. Thus, Catherine adopted a dog and named it Khan. Catherine was hopeful this would provide valuable lessons for her baby, such as sharing, learning to love and responsibility to care for animals.

They trained Khan during the first few days and everything began smoothly. Charlotte and the new dog made a habit of playing out in the backyard. However, things were different this day. They began running through the backyard grass together. That was until Khan’s temperament seemed to change dramatically. Khan began acting wildly aggressively (富于攻击性的), grabbing the baby.

This was not the normal play between the two. Mouth open, Catherine watched in complete and utter shock. She watched as Khan tossed (抛) Charlotte across their lawn. What happened next alarmed Catherine and everyone present. He tightly clenched his jaws into her diaper to toss her back and forth. Therefore, with urgency, she ran to Charlotte and carried her to safety.       

Miraculously, her child was unharmed. While Catherine brought her baby to shelter, Khan barked madly and then collapsed. The dog began crying. No one understood what was going on! Khan was obviously not doing well. The dog continued crying and then fell lifeless. Catherine focused on the dog, watching his dying eyes and realized he had been protecting her child. It turned out that Khan was protecting Charlotte from a poisonous, dangerous snake. She used all her strength to bring the dog to her car and sped for the vet, hearing his breath slow. When the vet took over, Catherine cried and felt totally helpless, so she prayed for his recovery.

The vet had to remove all the snake poison from the body. Quite a few days later, Khan was slowly getting stronger through the vet’s effort. Eventually, he made progress and the snake’s venom was removed. Actually, Khan impressed even the vet with his rapid recovery and progress.   

The whole family could be reunited once again with this amazing and heroic animal. Catherine was determined to protect this amazing animal as if it were her own child.

Few marsupials (有袋哺乳动物) have gone from miraculous survival to the edge of extinction as quickly as the Kangaroo Island dunnart (狭足袋鼩).

In 2019 and 2020, devastating fires burned nearly 10 million hectares of southeastern Australia. The flames threatened hundreds of species with extinction, but the Kangaroo Island dunnart — which already numbered less than 500 before the fires — seemed to be one that was beyond expectation in the aftermath. But now these rare creatures may be more at risk than ever, researchers say June 16 in Scientific Reports. The danger, as domestic as it sounds, is getting eaten by a cat.

As of 2008, invasive wildcats had contributed to at least 13 percent of extinctions worldwide. That’s one reason why the government has been euthanizing (安乐死) wildcats on Kangaroo Island for years. The scientists who conducted the dunnart study knew all this — but when they studied the remains of wildcats euthanized in 2020, they were still surprised by what they saw: Seven out of 86 wildcats had recently dined on dunnart.

“We were not expecting to find so many,” says Louis Lignereux, a field researcher at the University of Adelaide School of Animal and Veterinary Science. “It’s particularly bad news, ”he says, “if you think of what was in the wildcats as only a brief description of what they ate in the last 36 hours.” Taking that into account, those seven wildcats alone could have eaten enough to wipe out the Kangaroo Island dunnart within a few months, if they had survived—and there are hundreds of other wildcats on the island.

A small habitat makes the dunnarts especially vulnerable. It’s like putting all your eggs in one basket, Lignereux says. Since the fires, the Kangaroo Island dunnart is thought to now live in an area about one-tenth of the size of Manhattan. “If something happened to this spot,” he says, “then the dunnart is gone forever.”