Okay friends, it’s been a hard day slogging over my bibliography, and I’m tired and need some cute animals. Fortunately, we have two today.
Reader Lauren sent me this video with a comment:
I always thought a wombat was a vicious creature with which one should engage in mortal combat. This video proves they just want to be skritched.It makes you feel sorry for the wild animals that never get a nice belly rub or full body stroking.
Do all mammals like tummy rubs? Name one that doesn’t!
Reader Grania sent this one, which is labeled “Meet Flocke the baby polar bear, who is being taught to crawl by the zookeepers at Nuremberg Zoo. Apparently she was rejected by her mother so they separated them for fear that mother would harm the baby.”
Doesn’t get much cuter than this.
I never never seen a wombat in the wild, though many times my dachshund would enter their burrows, always a frightening experience for me as a child, because a wombat can crush an animal against the roof of its lair. The wombat in the video seems only half grown.
I have seen a platypus in the wild, which was a great thrill, and only a week or so ago in the crepuscular evening light I spied what I have come to assume was a nightjar in flight. At first sight it seemed to be a rather stocky parrot, and hence unusual for a parrot, but while I was watching it move towards some trees it suddenly changed direction and climbed rapidly where I saw it close in on a large insect just above the treetops. The insect disappeared as the bird flew on. For my money, that was nightjar!
Photo or it didn’t happen:-)
WOMBAT MARSUPIAL, NOT MAMMAL???
Marsupials are a class of mammal.
Those are both cute but the wombat was my favourite. Such a big smile for the belly rub!
Lovely skritches all:-)
Squees on the Ursus Maritimus
For some animals, isn’t belly massage a mother-to-baby signal that “now is a good time to shit, and I’ll eat it all up2. Or something about like that.
his puts “two girls one cup” into a very different light. And I seriously dis-recommend people from searching for video to accompany that. No, really, don’t. Cophrophagy is fine for rabbits ; with humans it just pushes SO many of the wrong buttons.
tut tut, gravel – no capital for the specific name; ‘maritimus’, not ‘Maritimus’.
So cute! Wombats have long been my favorite animal, hence my email name uommibatto, Italian for “wombat” (at least according to Christina Rossetti, who wrote a poem in Italian called “L’ Uommibatto”).
Note also Lauren’s “mortal combat” reference is to the Ogden Nash poem “The Wombat,” which ends with the line “But I would not engage the wombat/In any form of mortal combat.”
I wouldn’t either, if the wombat had any kind of sporting chance. They are extremely solidly built and their jaw muscles and incisor teeth are seriously heavy duty tools. The one time I got between one and its burrow, I went down like a sack of shit.
That baby wombat shows no sign of ever having had enough belly rubs.
I am a mammal, yet I am indifferent to tummy rubs.
The Secret Life of Wombats by James Woodford is recommended.
‘I never reared a young wombat
To glad me with his pin-hole eye,
But when he was most sweet and fat
& tailless, he was sure to die’
D.G. Rossetti
Wombats are vicious creatures?
When I visited Australia I went to a wildlife park. And I would never have suspected wombats to be vicious. They always seemed so calm and laid back as if they could never hurt someone.
But then appearances can be decieving. I also never suspected koalas to be so territorial. They also look so calm and cute as if they could hurt no one. But I wouldn’t want to get into a fight with one…
Koala bears have bitey teeth & they are on drugs. I’d stick with the wombats! 🙂