Mystic Echidna

[den]

I was visited by the Mystic Echidna this morning, just before the alarm woke me.

I was wandering through a field covered in short soft grass that was wet with dew. Dotted about the field were tussocks of reed mace and low termite mounds. Walking in front of me was an echidna, pottering about from mound to mound and leaving a trail in the grass. The bat clinging to me pointed a wing at her and she - and I know it was a she just by looking at her, despite the best scientists not being able to tell the sex without disection or DNA sampling (and monotreme sex chromosomes are a whole other bucket o' weirdness I won't go into. X, Y, and K chromosomes, in 5 pairs. Or is that 10? 12?) - She turned to look at me and I saw her skin and fur were white, but her spines were normal colours. She really looked at me, not the usual echidna-like vague squinting Did That Shape Move?

Then the alarm woke me. ursulav gets Mother Terapin. I get Mystic Monotremes.

Tonight is a rest night as far as slurpage goes. In the wild the female are be away from the burrow fo up to 3 days, so it's not good to give puggles a big feed every night. Puggle's weight is up to 249g tonight, that's a 14g increse from last night.

Comments

[frith]

Awesome dream! Usually I don't read dream entries since they're not real and they don't have a point, but a mystic monotreme is special. ^_^

Also special is that you are cognizant of normal echidna nursing rhythms and that you base your hand-rearing on that knowledge. Unlike people who kidnap fawns to amuse the grankids, feed them heavy cream and egg yolks ad lib a few times a day and hand them off to wildlife officers when they get tired of the mess.

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

A couple of years ago we rescued a kangaroo that had been raised on WeetBix and Milk, with some bread added. The poor thing had "lumpy jaw" by the time we got it. The worst part was that the parents were smokers and the roo got a nicotine addiction. When my friend got the animal it would raid car ashtrays for butts, or worse, would mug visitors if it smelled cigarette smoke on them. It would tear at pockets if they carried cigarettes and get violent trying to get at them.

Lumpy Jaw might be curable with time, but the addiction meant it could never be released. We had to euthanase it.

[frith]

Lumpy jaw -- did the finders keep sheep? I think there is now a vaccine for lumpy jaw?

None of my fawns were addicted to nicotine (that I knew of) but several stank of old dog when I got them. Fawns allogroom as well as eat dirt, thereby acquiring gut flora. After a week of proper diet and dirt ad lib they'd lose the stench.

Bill Plympton forgot to include a weed-warding wallaby in his animated short 25 Ways to Quit Smoking.

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

Lumpy jaw is a problem in macropods caused by processed grain foods (bread, cookies etc.) fed to them by people who think it's cute wild animals will take food from them.