This prickly koala found a human friend with a hairbrush and the internet loved it

It’s not every day that a koala turns up at your front door.

And it’s even more rare that one of the furry critters comes to your house asking for help.

But that’s what happened to Bruce Atkinson, from Victoria in Australia, at the weekend.

A koala arrived on his doorstep in a bit of a prickle.

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The animal was covered in sticky burrs and clearly in a lot of discomfort.

So Bruce made its day a whole lot better by removing them from its fur – with a hairbrush.

Initially, the koala was a bit grouchy, pushing away a bowl of water and refusing to be touched, so much so that Bruce gave him the nickname “Narky”.

But eventually, after Bruce grabbed the brush and put on a motorcycle glove to avoid being scratcheded, the koala calmed down.

“I was just amazed that the koala seemed smart enough to realise that I was trying to help him and I could not believe how quickly he went from being aggro to letting me pet and tickle under chin,” wrote Bruce on the Otway Community News Facebook page.

After getting cleaned up, the koala had a feed of gum leaves and went back into the bush.

“I was just wandering out to have some breakfast early in the morning and I saw a koala on the porch,” Bruce told ABC News.

His post has more than 2,300 likes and has been shared more than 1,800 times.

“It wandered up, which is not unusual … but this one looked a bit distraught, it was just sitting there all glum.

“I went out to take a photo of it and noticed all these burrs all over it.

“I just gently poked the brush at some of the burrs. Within seconds it decided, ‘this is alright, I’ll have more of this’.”