I had to take Veronica to her midwives appointment yesterday and as I was about to walk up the front steps to the car I saw an echidna perched on top of the stone work.
My first thought was, “How the hell did you get up there?” Echidnas can climb and I have seen them happily eating ants on 3 foot high dead tree stumps. After I had taken a few photos, I noticed that this young echidna was shivering and she also wasn’t making any attempt to climb down off the stonework.
I gently placed a towel over her so that she wouldn’t panic and fall off the wall. I very, very carefully (because echidnas are very prickly) lifted her off the stonework and placed her on the ground. She immediately tried to bury herself . Echidnas have really strong claws and they will partially bury themselves so that only their spines are exposed and would be predators soon get sick of being prickled and leave them alone.
After about ten minutes she trundled off.
Now that she/he had safely wandered back into the bush, I had a good look around the stone steps to see if I could work out why she had been up there. It soon became obvious that she had fallen into the frog pond and once she had climbed out she was stuck..
I think that she/he had come down looking for either a drink or a feed of ants and had fallen in.
She/he had then managed to clamber out up onto the stonework..
This is how I found her. I really like Echidnas they are one of my favourite native animals..
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