Welcome to Day 16 of the A-Z Blogging Challenge. My theme
is:
'Wildlife Encounters'
Edited extract from one of my articles published in an
English language newspaper in Spain:
The platypus is an animal I had learnt about in school.
Unique to Australia it is not a marsupial, but a monotreme – or egg-laying
mammal.
These little creatures live in burrows on the banks of
freshwater lakes, rivers and streams. They only venture out early in the
morning and evening. They are nervous as actors with stage fright.
The accommodation I picked near Mount Field National Park in
Tasmania was specifically chosen because I had heard that it had a small lake
containing a colony of six wild platypuses.
On the evening we arrived we caught a brief glimpse of
movement out on the lake.
In the ill-lit dusk we hazily managed to identify a platypus through our binoculars. It wasn’t enough.
The following morning I rose early and crept out in the
misty dawn.
As I neared the lake I spotted disturbances in the water
close to the shore. I approached with care and was rewarded with three platypuses
diving for breakfast, sleek as miniature otters.
Crouched in the dew damp grass, at that moment I didn’t care
if I saw nothing else in Tasmania.
See you tomorrow – I’m heading north. Can you guess where
and what the next animal will be?
