As we were doing a bit of gardening out the front of our place, Badger was snuffling around in the lillies on the footpath. He had rounded up and hearded out a poor little injured bandicoot who was previously hiding in there. Since he's a Good Dog, he didn't try and eat it (although I'm sure he would have if it had crossed his mind that it may be edible - he was a little scared of it), and simply hearded it out towards me, and then sat watching it.
I scooped the poor little fellow up in my t-shirt, and took him inside. He had hurt one of his back legs and his tail, and was very slow and dopey. You could pick him up and pat him, whereas you'd be hard pushed to even catch a healthy one. We put him in a box in the kitchen and gave him some water, and let him rest. He was well snuggled into my favourite Triumph t-shirt and had no intentions of giving it up, so I reluctantly left it with him.
We eventually got onto the local wildlife carers (wasn't that a fun exercise in driving around town, ringing unanswered mobile phones, and wildlife clinics that proudly advertised "Open 7 days" on their closed front doors - the same clinics which referred you to the aforementioned unanswered phones) late that afternoon, and a tattooed, pierced, goth/emo, gruff and generally very unhelpful girl came to collect him.
We've not heard anything since, so can only hope that he was OK, and that a vet somewhere fixed him up and he's back to bouncing around the neighbourhood. Hopefully not ours though - the main way that ticks get bought into the yard is via bandicoots, and Badger's had enough of those to last him a lifetime!
