Friendly echidna

Our new garden pal

We take a break from our normal programming to share a heartwarming story of our local echidna. Echidnas are native to Australia, and they’re a very unusual animal. Not only are they a marsupial, they are a monotreme—one of the rare egg laying mammals (along with platypuses)—but they also feed their young with milk. They eat ants and termites.

Two weeks ago, our dog started barking, alerting us that there was an intruder in the car port. It was a short-beaked echidna.

Then I noticed that the echidna was snuffing under the fence. That’s his or her little nose beak, right there. He or she seemed to want to come in.

Well, what’s a girl to do when an echidna asks nicely? Let the echidna in, obviously. I wasn’t expecting our new pal to take up the invite quite so enthusiastically.

Today, the echidna was back. I went to take some more photos.

I was barefoot. And then… Seriously. The echidna came over and SAT ON MY BARE FOOT. I do not really know what one is supposed to do in this situation. When I’ve seen them in the wild before they’ve been very skittish.

I can tell you what I did. I stood very, very still (no desire to be prickled with a spine) and let the echidna sit on my foot for a minute or two, while he or she gave my foot a very good sniff. I have now been either licked or snotted on by an echidna (I am not sure which). Then he or she wandered off. Apparently there’s a lot of ants up in the back corner of the yard, and our little pal is having a feast.