Arizona republican., 1915-09-03
PARK KANGAROO MOTHERS
 STRAY KITTEN

| Reckoning chronologically, after the l fashion of the keepers of the ZOolOgi | cal Park in the Bronx, 1t was at the l time tha' the Australian phalanger l formed the unexplained friendship for | the wanderloo that the wallaby met l Snookums. That meeting was of vital l importance to every student of animal | life in the park because it marked the | beginning of what Curator Raymond | Ditmars says is the strangest animal | association that has yet come under his | observation.
 | Snookums is a kitten, at the first a woe begone animal, with ribs that em- phasized the emptiness within and with l eyes that haunted. Now, of course, Snookms is a we'll fed, playful kitten | as befits her position in the social life 1 of the zoo
 Charley Snyder, keeper of the reptile | house, and lover Of all animals, told the | story of Snookums and the Wallaby the | other afternoon in the interval of keep 1 ing inquistive small boys away from | the equally curious sharp nosed tree l snakes. The mystery of the whole af- | fair, he said, was that no one knows | where Snookums came from, how she i got into the park or how she came to
 wander into the wallaby enclosure. The coming of the kitten really ! saved the life of the wallaby," said the l keeper. Tt was this way. The walla- i by, which is small kangaroo, little i larger than hare, brought the Zoolog- ] ical Park a splendid specimen of her kind. Keeper Reilly, going into the in closure one morning. found mother wallaby jumping about as lively as a | ar f.x- I,,, .I..F ness was not hard to findr It took shape at the first as two bright little eyes set in a fluffy. downy head, that peered out at the new world over the edge of mother wallaby's pouch. Tt is hard work raising young wall abies in captivity and the raising of
 the Bronx Park wallaby proved no ex- ceptiOn. one morning the little wall aby was found dead and his mother
 was mourning over him.
 1 Another morning, a week after the | little wallaby died, Reilly entered the ! inclOsure to dole out the morning food | for the wallaby family, when he mo- | ticed another pair of eyes regarding ! him WiStfully from over the edge of the
 mothers pouch.
 1 Curator DitmarS was called in con- | ference, and he said that the best way
 to find out was to go back to the in i closure. When the trio arrived there | they found the mother Wallaby restored
 to her accustomed good spirits and car rying 9 supposed young wallaby. After l half an hour of the hardest kind of work, Reilly and Snyder succeeded in l cornering the wallaby and then, in spite ! of her resistance, Ditmars took from | her pouch a woe begone, bedraggled ] looking kitten. All the time the keep
 CTS were examining the kitten the
 mother wallaby lowered near, with the same concern she would have shown | had enc of her own young been taken 1 from it's maternal home
 Now Snookums is so big that she no 1 longer needs mothers care, and she | wanders away from the wallaby home | for days at a time. Mother Wallaby l has ceased to worry about her, but l still she shows affection when they
 meet. The welcome sign is always out 1 for SnOokums in the wallaby enclos- i ure.-F'rom the New York Times.