Ok, that sounds lame, but it’s appropriate. I was driving to work on Monday night, got to the end of my street and saw a small shape on the other side of the road. My brain said “Echidna” and then my eyes caught up and agreed, so I slowed down just in case it was - I didn’t want to run it over. Just as I’d slowed all the way down the crazy thing ran and hid under the middle of my car!
Putting on the handbrake and leaving it in neutral I jumped out of the car to investigate and called back to the house for someone to come and look after it (I was going to be late if I had to work out what to do with it) and in the meantime it had made its way out from under the car and was heading for the drain.
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Weirdest thing that I’ve called someone about since that time with the donkey and the waterme… never mind. Dad and bob got him into a box and put it in the ensuite, and he got out straight away and happily puttered around all night waking Mum and Dad up as its spines scraped past things. Eventually it went down between the shower and the bench, fell asleep and that’s where it stayed..The phonecall went something like this (I called Bob):
me: “uh, dude, come quick, there’s an echidna under my car” him: “what?” me: “yeah, you know… spikes, animal, echidna!” him: [insert appropriate wtf-sounding noises here] me: “yeah, it’s hiding, come help!”
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Getting it out from there was a serious pain - we tried being nice, leaving some water in the middle of the room in a box with the light off (since they are nocturnal, we thought it might come out for a drink) no go. Trying to grab it with a pair of big gardening gloves didn’t work either - bunching up in a defensive position made it stick in the corner harder. The same with trying to push it out with a ruler - jammed hard.
We called the koala center place in the local state forest, and they didn’t really know what to do with it, just suggesting to leave it in the local forest because it wasn’t injured. Aparrently there’s been quite a few things like this happening lately, animals going looking for water and getting lost in the suburbs.
Eventually dad got it out by just surprising it - getting a long ruler down between it and the wall quickly enough so that it didn’t have time to react - there wasn’t much chance of injuring it anyway because of all the spines in the way of where we were touching.
I’m kinda sad that I missed out on taking it back to the forest - I’d have loved to see it off and get some more photos - but it was taken back later that evening when I was asleep and put into an area with water and some nice scrub for it to live in. Who says I don’t have weird things happen to me on the way to work? Best reason ever to tell work you’re going to be late: “uh, there was an echidna under my car?” “what?” “yeah” “uh, ok then, see you when you get here.”