On my arrival home from work one day, at lunchtime , I was greeted by my children, who were actually excited to see me. They dragged me into the living room to show me the contents of a box. There in a cardboard box that is used for packing fruit, was the largest echidna I have ever seen. He (or she) filled up the whole box. I asked the kids what was wrong with him. The kids told me that the person who brought the echidna round said he found him walking along the side of the road and brought him to me in case he got run over. I was amazed. Why go to all that trouble to pick the echidna up….not an easy task with all those spikes….and just move him to the side of the road instead of bringing him to me? I realised the person did it with the right motives, but still….
I decided I’d better check him out just in case. So with great care, I gave him the once over, and decided the only thing that I could see was that he had a few ticks, which was quite common. So I asked the kids to take him back out to near where he was found (the kids, being well trained, had asked where he came from). My elder son by this stage had a driver’s licence, and jumped at every opportunity to drive somewhere…. I stressed that they would need to do it soon, as he would soon dig out of the box; cardboard doesn’t hold them for long. So I grabbed a quick bite of lunch, and headed back to work.
That evening I came home to find an empty box, and I thought, oh good that’s done…. The kids were all in their rooms reading or whatever. I prepared our meal. Around the dinner table I asked them how they got on with the echidna. They all looked blankly at me. They’d forgotten about him, and he was still somewhere in the house….he definitely wasn’t in the box. Dinner was forgotten as we all sprang into search mode, and started looking for him. It was obvious he was in hiding somewhere; we would have noticed him in the middle of the floor somewhere…. After about 10 minutes of searching under beds and chairs and behind things with no luck, one of the kids noticed that Albert our golden retriever was getting very excited near one of the bean bags. So I lifted the bean bag up, and there was the echidna, trying to look as small as possible. We transferred him to the box…..very carefully….and I instructed the kids to take him back NOW!!….while I cleaned up under the bean bag. He had dropped his load of ticks there, and I wasn’t very keen on having the ticks in the house, for some reason…..
So while they continued on their errand of mercy, I got out the vacuum cleaner and went to work. Once the ticks were cleaned up, I then emptied the contents of the vacuum bag into some paper, wrapped it securely, then placed it in a plastic bag, which was also tied securely, and then placed in the rubbish bin outside. By that time, the kids had returned, and everyone was calm enough to resume eating dinner. Just as well it was a salad…..
Mamaroo's Diary 