Woman using crafting skills to help Australian animals impacted by fire
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Michigan (WNEM) — A Mid-Michigan woman is on a mission to help some of the traumatized wildlife that have managed to survive Australia’s unprecedented wildfires.
Ecologists believe more than a billion may have died since September.
In Mid-Michigan, members of a Facebook group are dedicated to bringing comfort and help to injured or motherless survivors.
“My first reaction was just complete devastation,” Susan Trudell said.
Trudell feels awful about the fires that are raging in the land down under. Millions of acres in Australia have burned. She wanted to do her part to help.
“As soon as I saw the call for crafters it’s like ‘That’s something I can do,” Trudell said.
Trudell is part of the Facebook group called the Animal Rescue Craft Guild out of Australia. Worldwide, the group has 162,000 members and growing.
Their mission is to knit or sew items to help the millions of animals affected by the fires. Trudell is working on a joey pouch.
“It’s an outer pouch which is then lined with something that somebody else is going to sew,” she said. “It’s a sewn liner that goes inside of this and then the animal is placed inside of that to keep them warm. And it helps to simulate the mother’s pouch.”
Comfort for a baby kangaroo that’s lost its mother to the flames. Trudell tells us she hopes her creation will find its way to an animal that needs it.
“Oh, that would be phenomenal,” she said. “Even if it comes to the point where they don’t need them anymore and they don’t use the one I make, at least I know I tried. I did something to help.”
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