BANDICOOTS AND THE GREATER BILBY
8.1 Capture and physical restraint
Bandicoots and the greater bilby (Macrotis lagotis) tend not to bite or scratch and are generally harmless. They are nervous, fragile animals and great care must be taken when handling them to avoid injuring the animal.
Free- ranging bandicoots can be captured using wire-mesh cage traps (NHMRC 2014). Bilbies can be captured at night using spotlights and runners to capture them in hand nets (L Steindler pers. comm.). Capture of bandicoots and bilbies from pens is best attempted when in a grass nest or nest box to avoid having to pursue them in the enclosure with a net and risk injury. Prolonged attempts to capture flighty animals must be avoided. From within a trap, grass nest or nest box they can be captured by hand or preferably scooped up into a cloth bag. Bandicoots can be lifted and restrained with the rump supported by one hand and the other on the back of the animal with the neck restrained between the index and middle fingers. Bandicoots should never be restrained by grasping the skin or the tail. Hair can easily pull out or skin can be torn. The tail may deglove or break. Bilbies can be firmly grasped around the tail base and quickly lifted into a bag. Bandicoots can also be captured from a grass nest by flushing them into a hand-held cloth catch net, ideally with a drawstring opening that facilitates transfer from the net to a cloth bag. Physical restraint should only be used for minor procedures or to transfer the animal into a bag (Lynch 2008).Simple examinations can be performed on animals while in a bag. The best method of doing this is to sit with the bag on the operator’s lap and expose the areas of interest in a sequential manner while keeping most of the animal inside the bag. Small species can be turned over and gently restrained in the bag to allow examination of the pouch (Lynch 2008).
8.2 Chemical restraint
Sedation is generally not necessary and if required benzodiazepines provide good sedation (see Appendix 3). Injectable anaesthetic agents have been used rarely. Inhalation anaesthesia using isoflurane or sevoflurane in oxygen, with or without pre-medication, is the method of choice. Most species are easily restrained in a cloth bag with the nose exposed to allow placement of a face mask or the mask can be placed over the animal’s nose while wedged in a corner of the bag. Intubation is readily achieved as visualisation of the glottis is easy with the wide gape. Recovery from inhalation anaesthesia is usually rapid and smooth in bandicoots, but bilbies occasionally have slightly prolonged recoveries (Lynch 2008). Pre-anaes- thetic fasting requirements are provided in Table 9.1.
A simple bubble-through vaporiser has been used for very brief field anaesthesia of bandicoots (Fig. 9.16, Table 9.7).
Fig. 9.9. (a) Harp net being set up and (b) set to capture microbats as they swoop down to get a drink from a water tank. Photos: Mikaylie Wilson
9.