mmmmmmm, carrot

Tici smells sweet potato!

Tici wants the sweet potato!

Tici's happy when she's eating!

stopping for a scratch

a read and another good scratch

a scratch from someone else is even better!

This is Tici, a Common Wombat. Common? No, I think they should be called Special Wombats. Tici was my first wombat and it was love at first sight for both me and Todd, and Tici!

She came to me from another carer who had named her Tici because she was covered with ticks when she came into care. Otherwise, she was a fat, healthy, happy baby wombat who just needed a good home with lots of bush for her to be later released in. We were eager to help out.

The one thing I found very quickly is that you need to be very dedicated when caring for wombats. They bond very quickly and very strongly with their "foster parents", as Tici did with us. She loved following us everywhere (and once walked straight through a closed screen door to get to us!). In the wild they would naturally follow at their mothers heel for quite some time.

They love to be cuddled at every opportunity, even when sleeping. I lost track of how many times I was bitten on the ankle as a sign that she wanted to be picked up and cuddled!

We had Tici for only a few months before tragedy struck. Todd and I had gone overseas for a holiday and Murray, our babysitter, came to stay to look after all our critters.

We're not exactly sure what happened but we guessed that Tici had gotten into a fight with a fox (we knew there to be a young inquisitive one around). She turned up one morning with a few cuts on her legs and one under her chin. Nothing serious, and they healed quite quickly.

However, stress can do horrible things to a native animal. The fight probably would have stressed Tici quite a bit. She had love and cuddles from Murray, but as I said earlier wombats bond very strongly with "foster mum & dad", and the first thing she would have wanted was me and Todd.... and she couldn't find us.

Poor old Murray found Tici one morning, curled up at the very bottom of her borrow, dead.... how my heart aches as I write this. I know poor Murray felt very guilty, but it wasn't his fault. There was nothing he could have done. In retrospect I should have made it a lot harder for her to get out of the house yard so as not to come into contact with danger. She used to dig her way under the fence though, so I thought she was ready...... maybe not.

We came back from our holidays to be told the bad news, and I had wished we'd never gone. That's the bad thing about caring for native animals, you win some, you lose some. And this was the biggest loss I've ever experienced.