Even in the land down under, koalas are rarely seen mingling with humans. But one miscreant of a marsupial did not only attempt to contact his human neighbors - he wanted to steal their Land Rover too.
Sam Box, 15, was coming home from school when he caught sight of the furry carjacker "trying to drive" his father's vehicle. Sam, who lives on a 200-acre sheep farm in the town of Maude near Geelong in Victoria, Australia, says the koala was poised on the driver's seat, its paws rested possessively on the steering wheel.
When he tried to make some noise to shoo the tree-dwelling trespasser away, he tells Australia's 9News that it just sat there and stared at Sam, unafraid. When you're a koala hijacker, there are plenty of other things to be scared of aside from a 15-year-old boy armed with nothing but a phone camera.
"It was checking me out as much as I was checking him out," says Sam.
So as any teenager is wont to do when confronted with a wild animal, Sam took out his phone and snapped pictures of the friendly intruder as it appeared to "drive off" in his father's camouflaged vehicle.
When his impromptu photo shoot was over, Sam opened the driver's side door and the koala hopped out and ambled away, apparently unconcerned about the media blitz that would happen after his pictures were made public.
"I opened the door and he just got out and walked away," Sam says.
Michael Box, Sam's father, says he "couldn't believe it" when he saw the photos. Although the folks in Maude see koalas "a fair bit," they have never seen one sitting inside a vehicle.
"We have a really long driveway and once I saw one crossing the driveway and I went and got him and put him back in the bush, he was just lost," says Sam's father.
The Geelong area is becoming popular for the increasing number of surprise koala encounters. In 2009, for example, a photo of a baby koala taking a dip in a bucket on the balcony of a family home in Maude made the rounds of the Internet. The koala, nicknamed Star, was found some 20 meters away from its gum tree home when it was abandoned by its mother during a heat wave that had temperatures soaring to the high 40s.
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