Critically Endangered
I know they are critically endangered, but it is so much more of a happy thing to paint something that is critically endangered, rather than extinct. At least there is hope.
Wombats are pretty closely related to koalas. I guess there was a prehistoric wombat that is estimated to have weighed over 6000 pounds! I'm trying to decide if they would be cuddly or just downright destructive. I'm choosing to believe they would be smart, snuggly giant fluff balls. I cannot get a definite number on how many of the northern hairy-nosed wombats there are. I'm seeing numbers saying as few as 80 up to even 250 of them. I hope it is the higher number, but even that leaves them still in the critically endangered category. They dig burrows and are fairly solitary animals, though one site said they will share a burrow with same sex family members on occasion. They are the largest of the three remaining wombats and the most endangered. The females, who carry a bit of extra pudge in comparison to the males, can weigh almost 90 pounds. Unfortunately the wombat habitat is being taken over by invasive grasses. The grass was introduced to feed cattle, but it is less nutritious, and not a favourite of the wombats. They don't have to eat every day, and even when they do it isn't that many hours of eating in comparison to something like the kangaroo. Kind of amazing cool fact about wombats, they are the only animal to have cube shaped poo.
It is sad but funny. As I'm sitting here typing, our almost toothless dog is gumming away at her duck jerky treat. It would take our other dog a minute or two to eat it, but she will work on it for half an hour before she finishes it. The blind dog got something longer lasting, but still finished before her. Since he went blind, she started growling whenever he got too close to her for her preference. She knows he can't see her and warns him so he won't bump into her. She's never been fond of him, just tolerated him. So, he knows that she still has a treat and he will get just to the edge of her personal space bubble and sit and make "poor me" type noises feeling all sorry for himself that he doesn't still have a snack. He got tired of her ignoring the fact that he must undoubtedly be starving to death while she refused to share. He wandered off, found one of the beds she uses sometimes, and moved it. I'm not sure why, but he put it up on top of my LifePro Vibration Plate. He's terrified of it when it is on because he's a seriously timid dog, so I don't know if he's trying to tell her something or if he was just trying to steal it and got stuck at that point. We have weird dogs, but sure I love them. We have nicknamed the blind terrier Fuzz Face because he has the old man eyebrows and a beard. The beagle corgi mix is Fuzz Butt because he has a very corgi fluffy behind in spite of the beagle in her. I think I'll refer to them by their nicknames from now on rather than just the mix or the fact that Fuzz Face is blind and Fuzz Butt is gummy.
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