Encounters with wildlife (2)

Oh blog, I did it again, didn't I?  Blame Facebook.  It has admirably embraced the role of snappy younger sister who comes muscling in to take over the good stuff.  (note, this is not a comment on my family or relationships within my family.)

Anyway, driving down a street in my suburb yesterday, we came across a kangaroo blithely hopping through people's gardens and it reminded me that I haven't finished the wildlife stories.

Roll back the clock to an evening in June when I was out at a function and got a distress call from my sister's English housemate.  "I think there's a bear in the garden'.  It can't possibly be a bear, what does it look like?  A process of elimination took place and we decided she was probably looking at a wombat.

Anyway, I ditched the function and headed over and sure enough, there in the the back garden was a very fat, contented looking wombat.  We phoned the ranger to come and collect him, because nice as it is to have wildlife in your garden, wombats will destroy the foundations of your house.  Not to mention being tormented by dogs etc.

It took a while for the ranger to come, so a degree of communing with the wombat went on between us and the neighbours.  He really was very lovely.

However, trapping of said large, healthy, feisty wombat was not easy.  The ranger said that it would look worse than it was.  It looked pretty bad.  He caught the wombat around the neck with a loop on a pole, but then had to try and get it into a cage.

Big wombat, small cage.  Not easy.  We all helped, but to no avail.  As you can see from the photos, what the well dressed wombat wrangler wears this winter is a short skirt, stockings and heels.  Not ideal.

It became apparent that the wombat and the cage were not going to happen, so our furry friend was released for another attempt another day.  Needless to say, he took off at a rate of knots - wombats are actually quite fast.  We've never seen him again, hopefully he didn't get too close to any main roads in his desire to escape.

Wildlife in the suburbs... it's an amazing place that we live in.