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A wallaby lost her mother. So this woman carried her in a pouch for a year.

This was a match made in heaven.

By

Heather Wake

wallaby, animal rescue, animals
Photo credit: @lindsays_animal_school/Instagram, used with permission – Baby Blossom enjoying her DIY pouch

Like most marsupials, wallaby joeys typically remain inside their mother‘s pouch for up to nine months to grow, nurse, and stay warm. At around six to seven months, they begin emerging to explore, but will continue returning to the pouch for security. 

A baby in need

But when Blossom, a baby albino wallaby, showed up at Lindsay Clarity’s UK-based animal rescue center, Animal School, she was far too young to manage without that safe, enclosed space.

Unfortunately, Blossom’s mom was nowhere to be found, and every other resident wallaby at the rescue already had a joey tucked into their pouch. There was no natural substitute available.

Clarity, who had years of experience caring for vulnerable animals (particularly rearing babies), stepped in with a creative solution. She placed a soft pink pillowcase inside a backpack and turned it into a portable pouch. The setup gave Blossom the warmth and closeness she needed to feel secure.

A year of dedication

Clarity carried Blossom in that improvised pouch for an entire year. She compared the experience to “walking around like a pregnant lady,” sharing with GeoBeats Animals that it became part of her daily routine.

Feeding Blossom required extra effort. Specialized milk and a particular bottle had to be shipped from Australia so the joey could develop properly. Every detail mattered, and Clarity stayed committed through it all.

Growing strong

The care paid off. Blossom did indeed “blossom,” eventually outgrowing her pouch and exploring the world on her own terms. Today, she’s developed a distinct personality, described as “more catlike than doglike,” and even showed a fondness for soft, calming sounds, which Clarity plays herself. 

Not to mention, she has a loyal fanbase invested in the daily adventures of her life. What began as an emergency rescue turned into a journey that many people feel connected to.

As for Clarity, she credits Blossom with changing her life, saying, “Caring for her is one of the most rewarding things I have ever done.”

Fascinating wallaby facts

Blossom’s story also highlights how remarkably adaptable wallabies are: able to live in forests, rocky areas, or open grasslands. They are known to be opportunistic feeders, grazing at dawn and dusk to avoid midday heat. ​​They also have the ability to pause pregnancy, which aids survival in uncertain environmental conditions.

animals, wholesome, geobeats
A young wallaby Photo credit: Canva

Albino wallabies like Blossom are especially rare. Their lack of pigmentation gives them their striking pale appearance, though it can also make them more vulnerable in the wild due to reduced camouflage.

Life at Animal School

However, Blossom is, of course,  just one of the many happy animals at Animal School. For Clarity, inspiring others to learn about animals has been a lifelong passion. And when she’s not running animal therapy sessions, “Creative Creatures” art classes, or various other onsite activities, she loves using social media to offer glimpses into the continuously fascinating animal kingdom. 

To stay up to date with Blossom and the other Animal School residents, be sure to head over to Instagram and give a follow. 

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  • Singer in hospice performs soulful ‘Landslide’ cover ‘one last time’
    Photo credit: via Recordsnet and Matt Becker/Wikimedia Commons – Singers Marirose Powell (L) and Stevie Nicks (R).
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    Singer in hospice performs soulful ‘Landslide’ cover ‘one last time’

    She was Stevie Nicks in a Fleetwood Mac cover band for over 20 years.

    Tod Perry

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    The final performance of singer Marirose Powell has people welling up all over TikTok because of the soulful way she sang “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac while in hospice care. Powell performed as Stevie Nicks in a Fleetwood Mac cover band for over twenty years, so the song was a major part of her life.

    A week before she died from cancer, some friends showed up at her home and asked what she would like to sing. “And she said, ‘I want to sing ‘Landslide.’ And so she sang ‘Landslide’ one last time,” Powell’s daughter-in-law, Sam Xenos, who posted the video on TikTok, told People. 

    In the video, Powell grabs the railing over the medical bed as she sings a song about the inevitability of the passing of time. The song had to have taken on an even greater meaning as Powell was in the final days of her life. “I’ve been afraid of changing because I built my world around you,” Powell sings. “Time makes you bolder, and even children get old and I’m getting older, too.”

    “My mother-in-law performed as Stevie Nicks for decades,” Xenos wrote in a video overlay. “This was her final performance before she passed the following week.” In the caption, she added there wasn’t “a day that goes by that I wish we’d had more time with her. She was truly the only person I’ve ever known to leave people better than she found them. Until we can be together again, mama.”

    Powell passed away on April 10, 2024, at 62.

    @samxenos

    there isnt a day that goes by that i wish we’d had more time with her. she was truly the only person i’ve ever known to leave people better than she found them. until we can be together again mama…

    ♬ original sound – samxenos

    In her obituary, she is remembered for her “infectious smile” that “guaranteed to brighten anyone’s day and she was known for her incredibly kind soul and generous heart. She had the beautiful ability to leave all those she touched better than she found them.”

    In addition to performing as Steve Nicks, Powell released 3 solo albums and worked as an ER nurse. As a lifelong musician, she would probably be more than pleased to learn that her final performance has touched many people.

    “I hope Stevie Nick sees this. She would be proud to know that your mom sung her songs for decades,and her choice of this song was heartfelt,” one commenter wrote. “I’m sobbing. God bless you and your family. Your mom is beautiful,” another added.

    “That might be the most touching performance of ‘Landslide’ to ever exist,” a commenter wrote.

    Xenos and her husband, Powell’s son, are overjoyed that the video has gone viral. At first, she was afraid of how her husband would react to the clip being posted on TikTok. “I remember calling my husband nervous because he didn’t know I posted it,” Xenos told Upworthy. “He was over the moon after reading the comments and seeing people feel her genuine soul from that small clip. He asked me to post more videos of her and they have generated a phenomenal response. She was the most giving and generous person. I would tell her to post her music and she was worried no one would care. I’m so honored to have proved her wrong on that fact.”

    Nicks says she wrote “Landslide” in Aspen, Colorado, at 27. “I did already feel old in a lot of ways,” Nicks told The New York Times. “I’d been working as a waitress and a cleaning lady for years. I was tired.”

    She was also having a hard time in her relationship with Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham. She composed the song while looking out her window in the snow-covered Aspen mountains. “And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills / Til the landslide brought me down.”

    Here is a full performance of “Landslide” that Powell gave in 2016 at the Prospect Theater in Modesto, California. Jamie Byous joins her on guitar. 

    This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated.

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  • Indigenous woman cries tears of joy after hairdresser discovers ‘unruly’ grey hairs
    Photo credit: Canva – Indigenous woman cries tears of joy after hairdresser discovers 'unruly' grey hairs
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    Indigenous woman cries tears of joy after hairdresser discovers ‘unruly’ grey hairs

    “What a sacred and healthy perspective.”

    Jacalyn Wetzel

    Grey hair has been a concern for people since before hair dye was invented. Some people pluck them and dye them as soon as they see them growing in, while others embrace the silvery hairs. Chiara Do’wal Sehi (Sunshine) Enriquez, an Indigenous woman from the Karankawa Tribe, recently shared her excitement about learning she had grey hair.

    For a brief period of time, people were actually dyeing their hair grey prematurely. It wasn’t uncommon to meet a 20-something with “granny grey” purplish-silver hair, but the popularity faded nearly as fast as it started. But for Enriquez, grey hair isn’t a fad or something to hide. It’s a right of passage to celebrate.

    indigenous, grey hair, getting older, culture and humanity, going grey
    Indigenous woman with long braids.
    Photo Credit: Canva

    During the colonization of the Texas Gulf Coast where the Karankawa originated, the Indigenous tribe was nearly eliminated. According to the Texas State Historical Association, the Karankawa people fought to maintain their land from 1685 until 1858 from French and Spanish settlers. Due to this multi-century, on-and-off battle for their territory, the tribe’s numbers became so small that they were considered “extinct.”

    Enriquez is a descendant of the small number of Karankawa that survived. To her, living long enough to experience the growth of grey hair is a gift. The woman shares how much her “unruly” greys mean to her in a video uploaded to her Instagram page.

    indigenous, grey hair, getting older, culture and humanity, going grey
    Indigenous woman standing in sunshine.
    Photo credit: Canva

    “I got my hair styled today. I don’t get it cut. It’s a cultural belief that I was taught by my mother. We don’t cut our hair, we let it grow. We save the cut for very, very serious and important moments in our lives,” she says while sitting in her car.

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    Elderly indigenous woman.
    Photo credit: Canva

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    Someone else writes, “This had me in tears because i’ve loss so many people and im only 30 and the day i get grey hairs i will celebrate with them!”

    Another person says, “i’m so happy to hear this expression of delight regarding your grey hair~ i am only just now getting greys & my own natural reaction was very different from my mom’s & grammom’s reactions~ i was surprised to find that i like seeing them appear~ hearing your perspective makes me think that it’s because i am not as tethered to the usa culture as they…
    so thank you for sharing your experience & offering food for thought~ & congratulations.”

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    Elderly Indigenous woman with hair covered.
    Photo credit: Canva

    “What a sacred and healthy perspective,” one person says.

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    A young girl tells Carol Burnett ‘hello’ from her neighbor. It happened to have been Carol’s biggest crush.

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    Tommy Tracy?

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    Making sure he could find her

    The Instagram handle continued. “Carol has said she actually considered changing her name to Carol Creighton early in her career because she thought it sounded better, but she kept Burnett specifically because she wanted Tommy Tracy to know it was her if she ever became successful. He sent his regards via a little girl in a studio audience decades later.” (This anecdote has been confirmed!)

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    After his father rejected a circus’ offer to buy him for $5,000, 3-foot-tall man becomes a doctor

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    Photo credit: Canva – (L) Restaurant manager approaches a table; (R) An elderly woman having difficultly at her table
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    The obstacles of stroke recovery

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    @notjustabartender

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    @jayvalenz_20

    she loves me yall lol #girldad #stepdad #chicago #school #daughter

    ♬ death bed (coffee for your head) – Powfu & beabadoobee

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    People knew how it made him feel

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    Julian ended his video saying he was going to take her out for food — which, as many commenters pointed out, is about the most dad response imaginable.

    The title of “dad” isn’t something you can ask for or negotiate. It’s conferred. And apparently, a school pickup on an ordinary afternoon is exactly the kind of place where it happens.

    You can follow Julian (@jayvalenz_20) on TikTok for more content on parenting and family. 

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    He googled “what do you put in an obituary” when his dad died and wrote one of the most beloved ones the internet has ever seen

    “We have all done our best to enjoy/weather Robert’s antics up to this point, but he is God’s problem now.”

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    He Googled it.

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    So Charles did the same. What he wrote for Robert Adolph Boehm, 74, of Clarendon, Texas (population 2,000) went viral almost instantly when Robertson Funeral Directors shared it on Facebook. It has since been viewed more than a million times.

    The viral obituary of a Texas man

    It begins like this:

    “Robert Adolph Boehm, in accordance with his lifelong dedication to his own personal brand of decorum, muttered his last unintelligible and likely unnecessary curse on October 6, 2024, shortly before tripping backward over ‘some stupid mother****ing thing’ and hitting his head on the floor.”

    It continues. Robert was born in Winters, Texas in 1950, “after which God immediately and thankfully broke the mold and attempted to cover up the evidence.” He managed to avoid the Vietnam draft by getting his wife Dianne pregnant three times between 1967 and 1972. His youngest son Charles arrived in 1983, the obituary notes, “with Robert possibly concerned about the brewing conflict in Grenada.”

    His lack of military service was, the obituary observes, “probably for the best” — given that Robert later took up shooting as a hobby and managed to blow two holes in his own car’s dashboard on two separate occasions. His wife Dianne, “much accustomed to such happenings in his presence, may have actually been safer in the jungles of Vietnam the entire time.”

    Good grief: Humor helps a family heal

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    It closes: “We have all done our best to enjoy/weather Robert’s antics up to this point, but he is God’s problem now.”

    Attendees at the funeral were requested to wear “outlandish or mismatched outfits” in his honor.

    The reaction said it all

    Chuck Robertson, who owns the funeral home and received the obituary, told The Washington Post he almost choked on his breakfast laughing. “I told people in the office, ‘Well, this is going to get us some attention,’” he said. “I’d never had a family come through the doors that wrote an obituary as classic as that one.”

    Charles said he was astonished by the response. “I was sad that my father was going to be forgotten and that my parents’ small life would get packed up into my trailer and that would be the end of it everywhere but inside my own mind,” he told TODAY. “That obituary was intended to ease my own pain and make a handful of people in a town of two thousand smile instead of frown, and it’s probably done that for 2 million at this point.”

    The message behind the laughs

    He also has a message for anyone reading: don’t let your parents slip through the cracks in small towns. “There are people all over the country like my dad,” he said. “They go there to retire, then when they’re old, their kids scatter and they end up alone.”

    When the family cleaned out Robert’s apartment, they found four harmonicas immediately.

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  • A Gen Z teacher gave his students 10 minutes to rant about anything they wanted. The essays were gloriously unhinged.
    Photo credit: TikTok | @mrcoachwhitehead – Screenshots of a young teacher talking on TikTok
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    A Gen Z teacher gave his students 10 minutes to rant about anything they wanted. The essays were gloriously unhinged.

    A 23-year-old English teacher cracked the code on getting students excited about writing. It involved a cartoon character getting roasted.

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    Ten minutes. Any topic. No grammar corrections, no spelling deductions. The only way to win bonus points was to be genuinely convincing.

    @mrcoachwhitehead

    ANYTHING TO GET THEM WRITING!!!! #fyp #foryou #teachersoftiktok #teacher #education #highschoolteacher

    ♬ original sound – mrcoachwhitehead

    “It has to be something you feel so strongly about that you can type for 10 minutes straight,” Whitehead told them, as captured in his TikTok video posted to @mrcoachwhitehead. A few students immediately had questions. One asked for a minute to think. Whitehead gave them eleven. Voice-to-text was off the table.

    Students take writing to another level – their own

    The essays came in. They were, as promised, unhinged.

    @mrcoachwhitehead

    Replying to @Titus.333 the moment you’ve all been waiting for#fyp #foryou #teachersoftiktok #teacher #education

    ♬ original sound – mrcoachwhitehead

    One student ranted about curfews, arguing that weekends should be completely free because school is already hard enough. Another went after boys in general. One made a detailed case for wanting to be rich specifically so they could give money to their friends and family. Someone addressed the injustice of teachers confiscating phones. One student, apparently undaunted by the fact that their teacher was reading this, wrote in the middle of their essay that Whitehead wasn’t actually the best teacher.

    Caillou hits a big nerve

    But the winner, and it wasn’t close, wrote about Caillou.

    For those who have blocked the PBS Kids animated series from memory: Caillou is a perpetually four-year-old Canadian child who whines his way through every episode and faces consequences for approximately nothing. The student’s essay, Whitehead reported in a follow-up video that has now been viewed more than 11 million times, cited Caillou’s baldness as suspicious and his ability to get away with everything as a fundamental injustice. “When I say this was the most convincing rant I’d received, I mean it,” Whitehead told his class. “I also hated Caillou.”

    Five bonus points, awarded.

    Finding passion through freewriting

    What surprised Whitehead most wasn’t the content — it was the quality. When students actually cared about their topic, the mechanics followed. “The craziest surprise was they actually did fantastic on their own with grammar and creating full, complete sentences,” he wrote in the comments. “I was super proud of them.”

    The technique Whitehead stumbled onto has a real name: freewriting. Teachers have used low-stakes, high-freedom writing exercises for decades precisely because removing the fear of being graded wrong tends to unlock students who’ve otherwise decided they hate writing. The catch is getting them to care about the topic enough to sustain it. Turns out strong opinions about animated characters work just fine.

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