So I am home working away on a tripod for a Tilley FL6 and went back to my shed and to my amazement a bundle is hiding behind my welder. This is an Echidna and it is highly unusual for them to be in a shed. He or she spent about 2 hours investigating my shed criss-crossing it several times and avoiding the wide open door. It was not too phased by me as I was very quiet. I ended up getting on with the work and as it was getting closer to dark, caught it, very spikey even with gloves, and drove it around to a national park and released it where it promptly dug in. If I left it in our place there was a higher risk of it getting caught up in cropping activities on adjoining properties. They along with platypuses, lay eggs. They are native mainly to Australia but a couple species are also in some Indonesian islands and Papua-New Guinea. I see one on the property every couple of years. They often dig into the ground or something like this. After getting some cobwebs from under benches it walked up and nudged my shoe a few times and then walked on. I put a Tilley down and it checked it out. A photo after it checked out the 5th burner on an Aladdin 5 burner range. An amazing experience.
Excellent! As it warms up here, they’ll be out and about around my place. Tough buggers, they are! Cheers Tony
Reminds me of a porcupine! Cute little critter. Looks like walking hypodermic needles stuck in a pin cushion!
@Alex Smith No; it's the Daihatsu F20 copy of the Toyota Blizzard. It has a Toyota 12R engine that I stripped down and rebuilt and little things like valve stems are different to the Toyota engine and front brakes disc (Toyota) versus Drum (Daihatsu) are different but gear box is fully Daihatsu and solid as a rock. Drives like one too. @george Several went through the gloves I used to pick it up and they felt like a needle too. One actually detached.
My lady’s farm hosts a family of echidnas. The dogs do a lot of barking at them but the echidnas just amble along unperturbed looking for tasty ants’ nests. The dogs have learnt not to go in for the bite.
