By Brady Halls
Sometimes I come back from stories with a totally different yarn to the one I was sent out to do. That was the case when I went to interview Paula and Bridgette Powers.
They run a Marine Animal Rescue Service on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. Any injured sea birds they find they take to the nearby animal hospital and after treatment bring them home for lots of TLC before releasing them back into the wild.
It's a wonderful thing they do and no one really knows just how many pelicans, ducks and so forth are severely injured after digesting fishing hooks and lines that have been discarded by fishermen with bait still attached. It is a slow and painful way to die, so Bridgette and Paula try to get to the birds before the grim-reaper does.
Did I mention that Bridgette and Paula are twins? Identical twins in fact. The type where the egg splits in the womb and the two new eggs are identical to each other. Identical in more ways than your average set of twins that come from two eggs.
Yes, like most twins, Bridgette and Paula dress the same. They look the same, even have the same tastes. But these identical twins do more, way more. They speak at the same time. Each knows exactly what the other is about to say so when a reporter asks one a question they both answer at the very same moment. It's weird and also very hard not to laugh.
When one gets sick, the other gets sick. When one goes to work the other must go to work with them. Their last job was on the cash register at the supermarket where they both stood, one taking the money the other giving the change. I told you it was weird.
So that's what's happened to Brady Halls on this story. I went out to do a yarn on an animal rescue service, and I came back with a story on identical twins. Not as worthy, but far more entertaining.
