The bandicoot book series

Bandicoot diary

September 2003
THE QUERULOUS QUENDA

The longer we stay here, the more bandicoots we seem to acquire. Friends point out that if I didn't feed them, I wouldn't have so many visitors.

The situation could now best be described by the word 'infestation'.

Clearly the word has gone out that we are the world's biggest softies when it comes to handouts to importunate wildlife, especially bandicoots. Concerned that a diet of peanuts mightn't be good for the animals, we now serve a sort of trail mix of peanuts, chicken pellets, brown bread and raisins. We have eight bandicoots either resident in or regular visitors to our yard.

There are Bounce and Pounce, who originally appeared as very, very small visitors, shyer than moonbeams and faster than gamma rays. We weren't sure what they were: we could hear a high-pitched whistling under the woodpile in the carport and in the surrounding bushes, and we could see the wakes of something in the grass of the yard, but it took several weeks of patient observation to see the creatures themselves. As they got older and less shy, they slowed down enough to be spotted in the yard, and in due course found their way through the cat door and into the food dish, where they are now regular diners. A new very small bandicoot has also appeared, offspring of one of last year's babies, we think. He usually comes during the daylight hours, having found out that he's safe from the bullying of the larger animals then.

There are two grown females, who seem to take turns being 'in kit' or whatever the term for having young in the pouch is. One or another always seems to have a bulging tummy, and if you are very careful, you can pat it and feel the squirming young inside. Bandicoots have the shortest gestation period of any mammal, and can produce a baby in 12.5 days. At the age of three months, that baby can leave the pouch and begin reproducing. Amazing.

And there are two large old males, one quite shy, and one as full of brass as a Yorkshireman's changepurse. Old Scabby, named for his frequent injuries, turns up without fail every night. If the food dish is empty, he no longer just bangs it to get attention; he comes in and demands his rations. He is quite elderly for a bandicoot, and gets crabby if the humans don't immediately offer something tasty.

A few times in the past we have found him at the front door scratching to get in, he having learned from the cats that this is the short-cut to the back porch. That was cute, for a while. However, now he's learned that he can get attention by hooking his claws in the security grill and banging the door until the humans come and let him in.

While you're waiting, Scabby explains, you can throw their doormat around, rolling it up and wedging it under the door so that the humans have to run around from the back door, across the patio, through the carport, up the front walk, and straighten out the mat so they can open their front door.

The problem with banging the screen door is that once you get it open and insinuate yourself behind it, you are trapped between the screen door and the inner door, a space of about 3 inches, which is pretty cramped for an adult male bandicoot. When that happens you scrabble around and say "whuff, whuff" until rescued. You can amuse yourself by piddling on the wooden threshold when you get tired of saying 'whuff'.

The racket can minimised if the humans remember to latch the screen door securely, preventing the bandicoot from getting between it and the inner door. The noise is still considerable, and the humans are apt to get tetchy when it happens after midnight.

Last night was the last straw. Scabby turned up on the porch for supper about 7, and for a snack at 9, and we went to bed at 11. Sometime after midnight there was an almighty racket at the front. "You forgot to latch the screen, didn't you?" mumbled the lump on the other side of the bed.

Sighing, I got up and opened the front door. A large angry bandicoot was throwing my doormat around. "Go away, go home, beat it!" I said. He lifted the doormat, scuttled under it, and stood peering up at me from the other side. "Go home, enough is enough!" I said, clapping my hands and stomping a foot. Scabby trotted up and pushed his nose against the foot. "You don't really mean it," seemed to be what he'd like to say. I got a spray bottle of water and spritzed him in the face. He sat up and groomed himself and then renewed the assault.

"I do mean it, this is ridiculous, it's after midnight!" I tried to back away into the house. Scabby followed, pushing past me. OK, I thought, I'll teach him a lesson. Reaching down, I clamped both hands around him. Bandicoots don't normally tolerate that, and I thought it might scare him enough to make him go home.

He just stood there between my hands, so I lifted him up. "Whuff, whuff" he said, wriggling, but making no attempt to bite. I put him down outside. "Go home."

He scuttled between my feet and headed for the house again. I pounced and caught him around the middle and carried him off to the garden. "Dig grubs, eat beetles, but go away and don't bang my door!" I said, giving him a push.

"Whuff," he said, and hopped away. I heard no more from him that night. Tonight I'm going to have to think up a way to keep him from getting his claws into the door. Perhaps a piece of wood fastened over the screen?

I know what all you animal behaviourists are going to say, I brought this on myself. I've let the bandicoot train me to respond to his agenda. I've encouraged him with food and he naturally expects to find it when and where he wants it, and not to have to walk all the way around the house to find it. I've no one to blame but myself.

With this lesson in mind, I've stopped putting carrots out for the kangaroo. Who knows what could happen if he, too, starts learning tricks from the cats?



For more stories, please follow the links:

Besieged by Bandicoots
Raising Stumpy

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