OUTDOORS: The mob comes to Manheim // In New Zealand they're officially
'noxious pests,' but the wallabies have friends in Pennsylvania
Jack Hubley
Sunday News Lancaster
http://www.lancnews.com
03/29/98
(Copyright 1998 Lancaster Newspapers)

UNSUSPECTING visitors to Dr. John Gueter's place near Manheim might secretly pity the poor guy with the weight problem. Most of us middle-aged men are a little doughy around the equator, but at least we've got our bubbles in the middle.

On the day I arrived John's belly was listing conspicuously to one side. Then it moved. Out popped a furry face - not unlike a rabbit, really.

But this little bunny was definitely not indigenous Pennsylvania fauna. It was Punkin, the wallaby.

Like their bigger and better-known cousins, the kangaroos, wallabies are marsupials; they rear their young in a pouch. Marsupials flourish Down Under in Australia, where evolution forgot to build big meat-eaters. But here in North America only one marsupial survives. The opossum is a living link to the dinosaur age that successfully ran evolution's gauntlet by: 1. producing huge litters; 2. eating just about anything digestible; 3. accepting civilization with a shrug, and; 4. playing possum. From a survival standpoint, the opossum is certainly smarter than it looks and bears no resemblance to most other marsupials, Punkin included.

So, if wallabies are native to Australia, you might ask, what are they doing in Manheim? And how did one find its way into John Gueter's shirt? The answer to the second question is simple enough. John usually wears a second shirt that doubles nicely as a pouch. Critters that grow up in pockets never seem to outgrow their fondness for them. A side benefit for John, a psychologist, is gaining some insight into what it's like being pregnant.

The answer to the first question: John's wife.

Dr. Carolynn Crutchley is a psychiatrist who traces her interest in marsupials to "as far back as I can remember." That interest has matured to a mob (the official collective term) of a dozen wallabies, half of which have access to their humans' living quarters through a two-way pet door. The bigger ones - those inclined to perch atop the rolltop desk or refrigerator - have private indoor/outdoor quarters downstairs.

But why wallabies?

"I got to the point in life where I wanted a house pet, and John wouldn't let the horses (they have five) in the house," says Carolynn jokingly (I think).

Through their horse veterinarian, the couple made connections with someone who raised wallabies, and in April, 1995, they got their first one, a young male whose proper name, Josef, ultimately gave way to Yoyo. "We just fell in love with this little creature," says Carolynn.

The same can't be said for your average New Zealander. This island 1,200 miles east of Australia has no native land mammals, but it does have a thriving wallaby population descended from animals transplanted from Australia late in the 19th century. And it does have sheep. These two very different creatures eat many of the same greens. Those of you who are even remotely familiar with the relationship between deer and farmers here in Pennsylvania can extrapolate. Wallabies might be charming in Manheim, but in New Zealand their official status is "noxious pest."

Carolynn and John quickly got wind of this and mounted a two-person wallaby rescue operation. Three months after Yoyo came into the couple's lives Carolynn was working on a New Zealand island called Kawau. The island was just what the doctor ordered: lots of wallabies and a crying need for forensic psychiatrists. She returned home in October with two baby female wallabies.

The following spring Carolynn and John went the easy route, ordering 10 wallabies from a wildlife exporter, but the animals arrived malnourished and diseased. In the end, the couple learned a lot about toxoplasmosis, a disease carried by housecats that is devastating to wallabies. Only four of the original 10 wallabies survive.

They also learned something about the wildlife export trade, and Carolynn vowed to collect her own wallabies from then on. That was good news to Adrienne Miller of the Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence, Rhode Island. Miller maintains the North American registry for Parma wallabies, a species considered endangered worldwide, yet, ironically, branded a nuisance in New Zealand. You don't need a license to shoot Parmas in New Zealand, but you do need five permits to export them alive.

With the total population of captive Parmas in the United States and Canada dipping dangerously into the 50s, Miller was eager to add new blood to the evaporating gene pool. And Carolynn was looking for as many reasons as possible to go get some. Perfect fit.

In June of 1997 she returned to New Zealand, built her own holding pen, set her own traps and caught five wallabies, including two female Parmas that Adrienne Miller placed at the Prospect Park Wildlife Center in Brooklyn. Two months later she again mounted a trapping expedition and returned with seven wallabies, including four Parmas that she gave to the Roger Williams Park Zoo.

Carolynn plans to return this year for more wallabies to add to the stateside gene pool. "The more emotional reason is we want to get more out before they're all killed," says John, who's willing to shoulder the entire livestock husbandry burden on their 10-acre property while his wife traps exotic wildlife halfway around the world.

"The Parma is such a sweet, charming little thing," says the silver-haired adventurer from Manheim who's not much bigger than a large wallaby, herself. "Sometimes you feel like you want to give something back to life."