A Visitor

We had a visitor at Spring Rock last week.  Graeme first noticed her in his machinery shed on Monday, hiding amongst the air seeder, header and other large farm implements.  He took a photo and left her to her own devices and told me of her visit when he came inside later that day.  Then, a day later, he met her again trying to dig her way into the house-yard by digging under a well planted gate post.  Her chances of getting in were considered slim so Graeme left her to it and came inside.  Cleo and Aslan weren't too impressed with her efforts to get into their yard and both puppies were very busy for quite some time watching her efforts and patrolling the gate area in case of invasion.  I imagine Cleo tried to introduce herself to the visitor - Cleo is that kind of dog and I did hear some yips and yaps from the general area of the gate - but with a sturdy fence and said well planted gate post between them introductions were about as far as it got.

The trouble started Wednesday afternoon.  Graeme came inside and told me if I wanted to meet our visitor in person she was just off the porch, amid a huge mess she'd made of the little garden at the bottom of the steps.  Once again Cleo was in attendance, keeping a respectful distance but not approving of this visitor at all.  Aslan felt he'd done all he could do yesterday and retired to his bed in the laundry and pretended there was no visitor at all.

I didn't blame Cleo's uncharacteristic tact with a new visitor.  Her usual technique when someone new arrives is to gallop up to this newcomer, try to jump into his or her arms and generally make herself hard to ignore.  This time Cleo was very quiet and just stood there watching the destruction of a poor, innocent garden.  I feel that my decorative, wire echidna might have been to blame.  Our visitor obviously felt she'd met a potential friend (no, not the big hairy creature she was sublimely ignoring) and had come along for a chat.

  

Cleo (that's her ear in the top right of the photo) carefully watching our visitor mangle my garden.

Our visitor was the largest echidna I've ever encountered (and as females tend to be larger than the males I'm reasonably sure this was a "she").  She was also the most laid back echidna I'd ever encountered.  When an echidna is discovered, no matter where it is at the time - soft earth, tar road, cement path etc - it usually tries to dig in and present only very sharp spines to whomever or whatever has discovered it.  This is a very effective tactic and has been perfected by generations of echidnas.  Once the echidna has dug itself into the ground there is no digging it out.  They get a very good hold on the earth and, with only wickedly sharp spines presented to the perceived threat (that is usually anything other than another echidna) the echidna is there for the long run.   I know this because I tried to move an obstinate echidna out of our chook pen once.  The end result was that the echidna stayed exactly where it was and I retired to the house after warning the chooks to stay away from their spiky visitor.  This little lady just kept working her way along my garden, moving soil here, uprooting a plant there, burying another plant along the way, in a very leisurely manner.  She wasn't in a hurry to hide from us, or perform the classic echidna digging in technique; she was just out for an exploration of these never before seen plants.  The large, hairy audience didn't bother her at all and she'd already met Graeme on two occasions and had no trouble with him, and if  she could cope with a large human and a large what-ever-that-overgrown-hairy-thing was another, smaller human wasn't going to faze her either.  

 
Our visitor, hiding behind one of my few surviving plants and having what I'm sure she thought was a well earned rest after she'd been busy remodelling my garden

Graeme arrived on the scene with a shovel ready to scoop our visitor up and carry her to pastures new anywhere else on the farm.  She wasn't too keen on leaving the comfy new spot she'd made for herself.  The remodelled garden was almost to her liking now and after all that work, not to mention the three day hike to get here, she wasn't budging.

I tried to help ease her onto the shovel, but all that happened was Graeme somehow managed to roll her onto my hand - soft side down thankfully.  I decided that as long as I had a good hold of her I may as well carry her to wherever was far enough away to hopefully prevent her from working on any more of my garden.  I balanced her on my right hand and used my left hand to very gingerly keep her in place.  Her manners were impeccable.  She didn't object to being carried, didn't struggle or scratch, she just enjoyed the ride and eventually poked her little nose out to admire the scenery as it passed her buy.  She had a lovely, warm, soft tummy and while she weighed a lot more than her size suggested, we got along very well.  I chatted to her as we walked along, Graeme close by with the shovel in case she slipped or started to object to being a few feet above the ground.  We talked about my preference for my garden they way it was before her visit, puggles she may have in the future (puggle is the name for a baby echidna) and how impressed I was with not being skewered by her spines.  Admittedly it was a one sided conversation but I'm sure she took in all I said.  Whether she agreed with my views on a neat and tidy, un-dug garden I can't say.

Our visitor and me having a chat as we walked to her new exploration area of the farm.

We finally stopped on the other side of our shearing shed where there was a whole paddock she could explore and hopefully, tasty ants she could munch on.   The main feature of this spot from Graeme's and my point of view was its distance from our house yard.  I must admit that had she confined her gardening skills to areas of grass or even under shrubs I would have welcomed her as another member of the menagerie, but my garden areas just weren't going to survive a prolonged visit from this young lady so I sadly placed her on the ground as gently as I could, once again thanked her for her good manners in not spiking me and watched her amble off to explore more of Spring Rock.

I just hope for my garden's sake that she finds somewhere she likes better than at the bottom of our porch steps.