Charlie's angels play mother to orphaned wallaby

Just the size of a jellybean when born, wallabies spend the first year or so of their lives suckling inside their mother's pouch, only occasionally venturing out for a hop around.

However, staff then came up with an innovative way to look after orphaned Charlie and fashioned their own surrogate "pouch" out of a rucksack – letting themselves in for months of sleepless nights and dawn feeds in the process.

Animal ranger Diane Taylor, who works at the wildlife park in Branton, near Doncaster, said: "It was so sad when his mother had to be put down but I was really excited about taking Charlie on and helping to bring him up.

"He was so timid at first, he would just stay inside the pouch all day and the only time he would come out is when we had to feed him.

"But now he is so much more confident and lively and he's even started to demand food when he's hungry by smacking his lips.

"We keep him in reception at the park and he will hop around and greet people when they come in."

Charlie, a Bennet's wallaby, is now growing up in the adapted rucksack under the watchful eyes of Mrs Taylor, 23, and her colleague Michelle Walker, 25.

In order to try to replicate the surroundings of his mother's pouch as closely as possible, they filled the rucksack with hot water bottles and blankets and put a pillow case on the outside, to make sure it would be as dark inside as the real thing.

On an average day Charlie – who is around 18 inches tall and weighs just five pounds – will need five feeds of Carnation milk from a bottle.

Mrs Taylor looks after him at home in Doncaster, before driving him to the Yorkshire Wildlife Park in a morning with Charlie sitting in his pouch on the driver's seat.

She said: "I do get some strange looks from people when this wallaby sticks his head out and I think I might look a bit mad when I am just talking to a rucksack as I walk along."

While the rangers clean and feed the various animals at the park, the wallaby keeps warm in his pouch behind the reception desk.

He naps sporadically throughout the day and night, sleeping in bursts between 25 minutes and an hour at a time, meaning he occasionally leaves his portable pouch for a late night hop around.

Mrs Taylor said: "It really is like having your own child. I don't go out much any more because I need to look after Charlie, though he is all right to be left alone for an hour or two.

"When we get back he will have the occasional mad five or 10 minutes where he will just leap around my living room, knocking the odd thing over and causing a bit of trouble, but at such a young age he spends the vast majority of his time in his pouch.

"Once he is finished with his adventure, he'll put himself back into the pouch – leaping in head first and wriggling around for a bit to get comfortable in there.

"If you put his favourite fleece from his pouch on your lap he will hop on to there and then do a sort of flip before going to sleep."

Wildlife park director Cheryl Williams, who also acts as a babysitter, said the aim was to gradually integrate him with the rest of the wallaby group.

She added: "Looking after Charlie is pretty much like looking after a small baby. We have to fulfil all his needs, just like you would with a human child.

"It involves getting up at night too – he usually has two feeds at about midnight and again at 5.30am.

"It was really sad when Charlie's mother died. It's the first time this has happened to us and we've had to look after a baby wallaby like this, so it's been quite a learning curve."

The expectation is that it will be another three or four months before the animal will be old enough to venture out more. Eventually, it will leave the pouch behind altogether.

"He should be fully out of the pouch and mixing with all of our other wallabies by the time he reaches a year old,"said Mrs Taylor.

"I really hope he is, because it will be impossible to carry him around when he's that big."