Wombats

A wombat carcass appeared on the side of Launching Place Rd one day about the second week of August, obviously the victim of a car during the night. Young Pip's nostrils worked frantically as she pulled on the lead towards it wanting to investigate. I let her go up close and have sniff for a few mornings, saying, "That's how you end up if a car hits you."

Snowy showed no interest in the dead marsupial whatsoever, not venturing close, in fact staying at the extremity of her lead in the other direction. After a few days I didn't stop to let Pip look but kept walking briskly on the other side of the road. Approaching each day I was expecting it to have been removed. I know the council pays someone to pick up animal carcasses on the roadside and usually after a day or so they're gone.

This one stayed in the gutter, in fact what's left of it is still there and high on the nose. A few days on, I noticed it's belly torn open, something had been eating its guts, probably a fox or dog which go for the easiest part first. This interested me, as I buy from the vet a bag of seed and grain which I soak in water overnight to ferment before adding to meat for our dogs' dinner. Apparently in nature dogs eat such by means of offal. My hope is that the dogs will have less trouble with diseases like arthritis later in their life. I've observed when mine catch a rabbit the first thing they do is eat it's guts.

Over the following weeks the meat of the wombat carcass was slowly consumed. The weather was cool/cold and decomposition slow. Jan, who walks her dog most mornings told me she'd seen two of the dogs that live nearby having a feed. I thought we lived sufficiently far away, and given that Snow and Pip don't wander far, there was little chance of ours going back there.

Wrong! The day I had the vomiting fit and went the doctor, the boys told me when I got back that our neighbour Rick had called in saying he'd seen Snowy up at the skate park. His daughter Alisha, who had been doing work experience at the kindergarten, alerted him after seeing her as she walked home. Rick, who knows Snowy well, went up to investigate. Snowy seemed disorientated and took off, so he came to tell us. He couldn't be 100% sure it was Snowy, he said. Snowy has siblings around the town that look just like her. The boys drove up in Gord's car and here was Snowy running down the middle of Launching Place Rd., so they grabbed her with some difficulty and brought her home.

I was at a loss to understand why Snow was at the skate park. A few more days on I met another neighbour, Janice, who walks her dogs or rides her bike most mornings. She told me she saw Snowy there a few days ago having a feed of wombat hindquarter, a bit after midday, which was just after I left for the doctor's appt. The sneaky old Snowy. Maybe she was disturbed knowing I wasn't well and followed me. The strange thing was, the day after Snowy was found up the street, when I fed her in the morning, she wouldn't eat her dinner till I turned and left. Normally the dogs sit and wait till I say "OK" before eating. This time Pip woofed in but Snow just kept sitting and watching me. I said OK several times to no avail, but when I began walking away she wolfed in. She must have had the guilts I reckon, or at least I can find no other explanation.

Last week when I arrived at my friend Pat's to do a couple of hours work it was raining. Pat invited me in for a cuppa. As I sat enjoying the chrysanthemum flower tea, Pat was telling about a sick wombat that had been coming around for weeks. Pat's dog Cameron, a young deerhound, harrassed the wombat and it was a difficult situation. Pat rang the sanctuary, wildlife refuge people, the vet, all she could conjure, but as often is the case, nobody can come right then, and later, wombat has gone.

The rain eased and as I picked some bay foliage in the garden before leaving Cameron began barking excitedly and I could hear Pat doing her best to admonish the gigantic young dog, who thinks everything is a game. I twiigged Womby had turned up so I got down from my ladder and went over to see. Poor little wombat was suffering mange badly and seemed blind and deaf. A number of big blow flies were in court around the poxy skin sorers despite the light rain. I felt the poor animal should be destroyed for humane reason.

"Pat can I ring my friend Huit? He has the odd sick wombat at his place and he shoots them to put them out of misery. He may come over."

"Yes, you know where the phone is, I'll keep Cammie away."

Huit came shortly after. He couldn't shoot Womby, he forgot his magazine and therefore had no bullets. We managed to get Womby in a bag and Huit took him home, saying he'd bury him after he shot him.

I left soon after and called at the Post Office to collect the mail. Fellow flower/foliage grower Ron was leaving as I arrived. I hadn't seen him for a while.

"You still doin' the foiage? How's it goin?" he asked.

"It's been pretty tough Ron, demand's fickle and I had a lot of stuff damaged by the heat wave. It's been a tough year really. Are you still trapping the dogs?"

"Yeah, it pays a lot better than growing. My contract with DSE is for about 25-30 weeks. After that the growing's a bit of fun. I do alright at the markets, selling mixed bunches of whatever we can find. The wholesalers don't want to know, but people at markets love 'em. I put out some pokers at the the market, tall as I can get, people say, Gee I'll take them, I've never seen them tall like taht." If I take tall ones to the wholesaler he'll nash his teeth and say he wants them all 80cm stalks or nothing.

"How many dogs do you catch a week Ron?"

"About one a half. You might go three weeks and not get one, then catch four or five the next week. I get a lot of foxes. They send me to and area where there's a problem. I'm in the Acheron valley at the moment. I set 8 or 10 traps each day for a while then do the rounds, always looking for sign."

"So they send you out to where farmers are losing stock?"

"Yeah, that, and wildlife. The dogs eat a lot of wombats, they're easy for 'em, and wallabies. They run down samba deer with teamwork, working in shifts. The deer can outrun 'em but the dogs take turns, till the deer's exhausted.

You'd think with losses to cars, feral and native dogs and disease, wombats would be feeling the pinch, but there seems to be plenty about. The Vicroads warning sign in Launching Place Rd. has a picture of a wombat on yellow background, and underneath the words 'Next 10 km'. Maybe drivers pick up a subliminal message, but I walk and drive past that sign every day and can't remember seeing it, till lately, when wombats have been so obvious to me.