Wombat chasing

(This post is out of sequence - we left NZ a few weeks ago but I'm doing this blog thing Memento-style, remember?)

I'm not sure I'd ever seen a picture of a wombat before this trip. I might not have even heard of a wombat. If I did, I definitely knew nothing more about them than their name. At first I thought this was just because we didn't have wombats where I grew up. But then we didn't have sharks in Montreal either. Or road runners. Or elephants. Or kangaroos. Clearly, wombats ended up with a lousy marketing team. Wombats are extremely cute. Small, furry, short-legged, buck-toothed. They are also avid grazers. In fact, I've now seen about a dozen of them for a grand total of 2 or 3 wombat-hours and at no point in all that time did a wombat look up from his or her busy munching for more than a second or two. Example. I was trying to get a good close-up photo of one. I quietly and carefully edged my way closer and closer until my target wombat's head filled the viewfinder. I took a few shots then lowered the camera and watched. I was pretty close at this point so it was easy to make out details. Head hanging down to grass level, buck teeth plucking away at the blades, nom, nom, nom, away it would chew. Small quiet steps, it meandered across the field, leaving golf-course-like stubble behind it. It just so happened that as I was lowering my camera to admire this adorable creature, its meanderings brought it closer and closer to my feet. Surprised at how comfortable it (he? she? how do you tell?) felt around a human, I stood as still as I could, trying not to spook it away. Suddenly I realized that it had grazed its way right up to my shoe and was now testing out the leather on the side of my big toe. Unable to maintain my composure, I pulled my foot away before my toes were mistaken for blades of grass. Despite jerking its head about when I pulled my foot away, the wombat didn't miss a beat. There was an imperceptible delay in the chewing rhythm before it got back to the grass near my other foot.

Later that day, while visiting the Tasmanian Devil Sanctuary, our host explained how, despite their cute and cuddly appearance, wombats can be quite dangerous. I tried hard to imagine this but could only conjure up an image of a small hole the size of a wombat tooth in the side of my shoe. Apparently, like their cousins the koala, wombats have a hard bony plate on their backside. When threatened by a predator, wombats head straight for their nearest burrow (apparently they take long enough breaks from eating to get in a little digging). The attacker can slash and bite at the wombat's butt with very little effect. Here's where things get ugly. If the attacker is sloppy enough to get its head too close, the wombat can trap and crush it between its bony plate and the ceiling of the burrow. A somewhat tenuous defence mechanism but we all do what we can.

Leah and I spent a bit of time discussing the implications of all this. We decided that wombats definitely wouldn't stray far from their system of burrows. Furthermore, they must have a strong instinct to dash for the nearest one if any sign of danger were to appear (I've since learned that wombats have clocked in at a whopping 40 km/hr so proximity to the burrow may not be that important). The next day while hiking the Cradle Mountain trail, we had an excellent opportunity to test out our hypotheses. Along the side of the track, we spotted several wombats innocently munching away. One in particular was standing about halfway between the track and an obvious burrow about 3 meters away. "I'll walk over to him and try to scare him into his burrow" Leah suggested, "while you get ready with the camera so we can catch him in mid-dash". She stepped off the path and approached the wombat with none of the caution or subtlety we had exercised earlier, perhaps even trying to look threatening. Three feet away. She looked over at me, "camera ready?". Two feet away. She looked at the wombat. Then at me. Then back at the wombat. One foot away. Nom, nom, nom. Our dash-for-the-burrow hypothesis was showing signs of cracks along the foundation. Six inches away. Nom, nom, nom. She leaned over and reached down to the wombat's back. She started to pet it. Nom, nom, nom. Clearly, the instinct is fairly specific to more obvious threats so next time Leah will have to impersonate a dingo or quoll.