An Australian couple met an unexpected guest when they returned home from work – a koala bear waiting patiently in their bedroom.
Fran Dias Rufino, who moved to Australia from Brazil, and her husband Brunno Rufino, reached home around 12.30am on 13 November and found an adult koala bear sitting on the floor next to their bed.
In a video she shared on her social media, the koala can be seen looking at the couple for a few seconds before climbing onto a bedside table.
“Only in Australia. We came from work now and we just found a koala in my bedroom,” she wrote in her post. “I was so nervous that I forgot my English.”
“I was nervous and worried about how we would manage him to go out,” Ms Rufino told CNN.
“His face is like, ‘Why are you so dramatic?’” said one comment on her Instagram video. “I prefer a cute koala than a spider or something like this,” wrote another.
In a video she posted later, she explained that the koala eventually ran outside the house through an open door after her husband used a sweater to lure it away.
Responding to questions in further videos, she said that it was likely the koala had entered through an unlatched pet door, and that koalas had been seen on top of eucalyptus trees in her neighbourhood before.
Many questioned Ms Rufino’s caption where she described the koala bear as being “aggressive”. She said in a comment that the koala had tried to bite them.
Koalas are critically endangered marsupials native to Australia and only about 100,000 to 250,000 are left now, according to the country’s National Koala Monitoring Programme. They face threats such as dog attacks, diseases like Chlamydia, wildfires, habitat loss, and fragmentation.
The area where the Ruffinos live in south Australia have relatively stable numbers for the koala population, according to CNN.
A recent study found that a 50km stretch of the Peak Downs Highway is a “roadkill hotspot” for koalas with nearly 150 of the endangered marsupials killed in just one year. About 145 healthy koalas were struck and killed along this stretch in 2023 compared to an average of 350 elsewhere in Australia due to road accidents every year, researchers from the Central Queensland University found.
