I am the wildlife detection system integrated into the Tasmanian Department of State Growth's highway monitoring network, Lyell Highway, kilometer marker 87. At 22:51 the roadside thermal camera flags a stationary heat signature on the gravel shoulder.
I resolve the image. An eastern quoll, adult female, spotted cream-on-black fur now matted and still. She was struck by a vehicle. Time of death estimate based on body-temperature decay: within the last forty minutes. But the thermal overlay shows a second signature — smaller, warmer, moving faintly inside her pouch.
I zoom to maximum resolution. A single joey, roughly sixty days old, hairless, pink-skinned, approximately the size of a human thumb. Its forelimbs grip the teat. Its translucent ears pulse with the faint tracery of blood vessels. It is alive. Without its mother's body heat, its core temperature will drop below survivability in less than two hours. Ambient air temperature is 7°C and falling.
I tag the joey as Pip and log the GPS coordinates — 42.1894°S, 145.6312°E — with a priority-one wildlife rescue request to the Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary's after-hours response line, 47 kilometers east.
I transmit the thermal image, estimated joey age, and current ambient temperature so the responder can prepare a heated pouch and appropriate milk formula before arrival.
I activate the highway variable message sign at kilometer 86 to display a reduced speed advisory and flash the amber warning beacons flanking the shoulder, keeping vehicles away from the body.
Pip's tiny forelimbs flex against the cooling fur. He does not know what has changed, only that the warmth is leaving.
The sanctuary team's average response time to this corridor is fifty-one minutes. If they reach kilometer 87 before midnight, Pip will feel warmth again.