Last night seemed like any other normal night. I did copious amounts of study, my brain exploded in a fiery mess, and I decided I should go to bed. A couple of hours later, Mat and I were awoken by the incessant barking of one of our dogs. He has a couple of different tones of barks, so we can usually tell what’s wrong. It’s either “someone’s out the front walking past, I’m just warning them I’m here”, “Missy piss off” (our other dog), or “OMG GUYS GUYS GUYS THERE’S SOMETHING CRAZY GOING ON OUT HERE YOU HAVE TO COME OUTSIDE IMMEDIATELY OMG”. Usually it’s just a possum, and then we spend the next 15mins stopping him from ripping it to shreds while we lecture the possum on being so silly, and didn’t it know there’s a crazy psycho dog that lives here and loves possom stew?

Last night’s barking was definitely the last one, but given that my brain still hadn’t yet returned to a functioning state, I mumbled a request to Mat to check it out. Dressed in just his undies, Mat braved the cold to check it out. A few seconds later I was summoned, and dragged myself back into a conscious state. There was an echidna outside! I said “yes Mat, that’s very exciting Mat, wait, WHAT?! COOL!”

Sure enough, up against the fence was a big spiky black blob. I took the obligatory photo, got scared when he moved, and ran back to Mat’s side. For 10mins we debated on what to do, since Turbo wasn’t going to forget it in a hurry, and OMFG IT’S AN ECHIDNA! I know what Echidna’s look like, I’ve seen plenty before, but never just randomly in someone’s backyard. We also dedicated several minutes trying to figure out just how it would have gotten into our backyard, since we don’t exactly have a generous gap under our gate that would allow an echidna to just wander on in.

Finally, we decided the best thing was to call the experts. We found a number for a 24 hour Wildlife Service, who said if we could try catching it then they would come and pick it up in the morning. Mat was pretty freaked out by the prospect, but we agreed. While he suited up with actual clothes plus boots and gardening gloves, I made sure the dogs stayed away. Unfortunately, in the quick 30 seconds that it took Mat to change, the echidna wandered into the far back corner of our backyard.

That corner is like the corner of doom. A great big bush surrounds the corner, and we just don’t know exactly what’s in there. It’s scary, it’s like a big dark place just waiting to swallow you up. Yet the echidna headed straight in, I didn’t think he was going to come out alive.

Now dressed, Mat charged in after him without a second thought, armed with only his gloves, a plastic bucket and a torch. It took him a few minutes, but he finally found the echidna in the very far back corner, digging his way to China. Or safety. Whatever.

Yelling at me about how disgusting the corner was, how many large spiders there were (yeah, no way was I going to help him now!), it was evident Mat was not enjoying the task. Everytime he would try to get his hand under the echidna, avoiding the spikes in the process, the echidna would stiffen up and make it impossible for Mat to move him. He was a strong little bugger!

Fast forward an hour. I’m sitting in a chair holding our dogs, making sure they stayed out of the way. Our littlest one, still only just over 9 months old, isn’t quite used to being restrained by the collar and didn’t like it. She was backflipping all over the place trying to get out of my hold, but a stern “stay” and she laid on the ground completely still. I started scratching her belly, and that kept her content. In the meantime, more yelling from the corner and Mat eventually surfaced. He had given up. The echidna had dug nearly 2ft down in the ground now, and it just wasn’t worth the time. It was now 3am in the morning, and we were both tired and irritable.

We deliberated, and in the end locked one dog in the garage and the other in the bathroom for the night, and returned to bed. We hoped that having a safe avenue out, the echidna would get on his way. Not so. I woke up in the morning and checked to see if he was gone, only to see him still buried deep in the ground. On a positive note, I survived the deep scary bush.

The Wildlife service rang us about 7.30am to find out the status, and advised we should just let it be. It seemed that our residential area was its homeground, and it was just wandering place to place. If we left it alone, it would happily continue along.

Long(er) story short, I went to work and Mat had the day off. He decided the big scary bush needed to go, and attacked it with some gardening equipment. He pretty much decimated it, to the point where we now need to hire a skip to clean up all the clippings!

Towards the afternoon, the echidna decided it was time to move. Mat saw it, and immediately pounced. He caught it easily this time, and was able to get it into the plastic bucket. He rang me at work, I rang the Wildlife service, and they praised us (phew). They said if we could find some nearby bushland that was not too far from our home, it would be the perfect environment for it. Not being too far away would avoid some undue stress on the little spiky bugger.

Thus, we went for a walk this afternoon, and let him go. Of course, I recorded the moment on my iPhone – it was just too cool not to! I’ve linked to the video below if you want to take a look. We tipped up the box, and he quickly crawled his way out. He crawled under a branch and stopped, which made Mat and I giggle because we thought he had gotten stuck. Turns out he had just found his next digging spot. We watched him for the next 5 – 10mins as he worked on his hole, and commended his camouflage abilities. If you didn’t know he was there, you truly wouldn’t have seen him! We had also made sure to put him well away from the nearby walking track so that he wouldn’t be discovered by other dogs or humans walking past, and could remain undisturbed.

The funny part was that after we started walking back to the track, two old men and their dogs walked past. You could read on their faces they were wondering just what Mat and I had been doing in the bushes! It gave me a giggle at least.

So quite the eventful day, and quite the story to tell! I wonder what will happen tonight?

FYI – video totally recorded and edited on the iPhone 4 with iMovie.

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