Last year, a resident of Queensland, Australia, named Susanna Tolo was woken up early by a notification on her phone. Her home security app notified her that someone was at the front door — but she wasn’t expecting any visitors.
“I remember thinking, ‘Who
in the world is outside my door this early?’” Tolo told The Dodo.
Tolo checked the footage from her security camera and was taken aback by what she saw. Right in front of her house, there was a little koala.
“I honestly couldn’t believe my eyes,” Tolo said. “I jumped out of bed, ran downstairs in my pj's, and at the same time, was yelling at my kids to wake up.”
As soon as Tolo opened the front door, she spotted the koala. He was hugging one of her house’s columns and staring calmly at her.
“It was the cutest and most surreal thing,” Tolo said.
There’s a small nature preserve near Tolo’s house, which is where the homeowner assumed the little marsupial had come from. She guessed that the koala was just a few years old and in the process of finding his own territory away from his mom.
As much as Tolo was delighted to have the adorable koala right outside her home, she knew he needed to be in a more natural environment for his own safety.
“Because we live in a residential area, I immediately worried that he might wander onto the road and get hit by a car,” Tolo said. “I wanted to make sure he was safe.”
Tolo called Wildcare Australia, a local animal rescue, to come help. The rescuers assessed the koala’s health and found he was in perfect shape, then relocated him to a safer area just 20 minutes away from Tolo’s home.
“They even sent me a photo afterwards of him happily sitting in a eucalyptus tree,” Tolo said.
Tolo was incredibly relieved that the marsupial was safe and sound in nature, where he belonged. And although it’s been a year now since the koala showed up outside her home, she looks back fondly on the encounter often.
“It was such a surreal moment to have a koala literally turn up on our doorstep,” Tolo said.
