Animals in the Australia Floods
People who care about animals in the flood-ravaged Australian city of Rockhampton are being asked to take in pets left behind by those who are fleeing the Queensland floods that now cover an area roughly the size of California and Arizona combined.
Staff from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals are having difficulty reaching a lot of the animals themselves. “Many people aren’t calling until the last minute and we’re having to go out in unsafe conditions,” Wendy Hilcher, an ambulance officer with the RSPCA, told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur. “It’s not just the safety aspect of getting to these places, it’s what’s in the water itself.”
Those who venture out into the rising waters are sometimes finding themselves meeting up with snakes – many of whom are good swimmers, stop to rest on fence posts, house steps, etc., and have poisonous bites.
This land is also cattle country, and cattle are not good swimmers. Ranchers say they are doing what they can to get their animals to higher ground, but it’s now estimated that tens of thousands of them will not survive.
More on the floods here.