Last Friday afternoon, we found the body of the mother slung off to the side of the road, partly hidden in the long grass. She must have been hit in the very early morning.
There was a tiny arm moving, sort of waving feebly out of the pouch, and the little head moving too. Incredibly, the wee baby was still alive and seemed unhurt, though very cold. We got the mother wombat into the back of the car and took both body and baby to one of the wildlife shelters (not Porscha, unfortunately, as she now lives a long way away). Anyway, not wanting to waste any time, we gently lifted the baby out of the pouch and quickly wrapped up . . . no time to check whether a girl or boy.
Alice is now with another of our best carers, Sue Kirwan, and the photos attached show her now safely in the humidicrib. Sue gave me 'naming rights,' so I have called her Alice.
Sue tells me tonight that Alice is beginning to drink well, and is alert and doing fine. She weighs 590 grams. In due course we'll have more photos.
Good eh?
Wombats look like little squat bears on four short stumpy legs, with adorable rounded heads, short ears and bright button eyes. Typically their coats are thick, coarse and shiny hair, their feet are bare-soled with long strong claws for digging their burrows and obtaining roots for food. Their teeth grow continuously so they must chew and gnaw on hard stuff as well as grasses, and we have one patch of ground here which is continually scratched over as the resident wombats search for roots. Males can grow to 80 pounds, females to 60 pounds, and undisturbed can live for many years. Whilst they do live in loose colonies and many of the burrows are interconnected, they do not co-habit as a group and can in fact be quite aggressive to newcomers. So Alice all on her own, without her Mama, would not stand a chance in the colony.
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