Wallaby and Joey

Hello everyone. . . sorry for not posting or reposting Saint Patrick's Day drawings. . . but I have been really sick.  Its just a cold, but it is a bad one.
For those of you who are reading this from Australia. . . WE ARE COMING TO VISIT!  We just  booked our airline tickets today!   We are going to do an Outback Bus Tour from Adilaide to Darwin.   We are coming this summer!  We are also going to visit Sydney.  We would really love to go see the Irwin's zoo but we probably can't manage to do that.  We are very excited to come see your wonderful country! 

In honor of this I drew a wallaby today.   The wallaby (for anyone who does not know) is a close relative to kangaroos.  The wallaby is smaller.  There are several species of wallaby.  The smallest is the Dwarf Wallaby.  They are only 46 cm from nose to tail and mass in at around 1.6 kg.  So they measure at around 18 inches long and weigh only 3.5 lbs.

The bigger wallaby species can grow to 1.8 meters long or up to 6 feet long.  There are perhaps 30 different species incluing two species that are called hare wallabies. All wallaby species are smaller than any of the kangaroo species. 

The wallaby are hunted for both fur and meat.  Two species are actually endangered.  The wallaby in this drawing is from a photo of a mommy taking a break and sitting down as her joey peaks out of the pouch.  Did you know that when the joey is born it is tiny, pink, and hairless.  After it is born the tiny newborn crawls and crawls over and through mommy's fur over to the pouch and continues to develop there.   Anmals that have pouches like this are called marsupials.

Wallaby with Joey