Just this morning, without the
idea of becoming amazed, I read my ritual morning newspaper.
My sainted wife was opposite me
furiously typing away at the computer attempting to pay our bills online and
on-time.
Smokey was high above on his cat
condo watching the normal daily activities.
Suddenly I espied an actual
newsworthy story causing me to exhort a few words of disbelief that cannot be
replicated here.
It seems as though not all
scientific grant money is frittered away for any apparently inane reason.
Wouldn’t you know this daily rag
published a hard-hitting story about wombats.
This caused me to investigate more about these little creatures.
In all honesty, wombats are
neither bats nor woms. They are 3½ foot
long marsupials that are native to Australia
Marsupials are animals that give
birth live and carry their young around in pouches. They are mammals – unlike seahorses that also
carry their young around in pouches. But
you should have learned that in elementary school.
Kangaroos, opossums, and
Tasmanian devils, are all marsupials.
In any case, there is a
postdoctoral fellow at Georgia Tech who has dedicated her “career to studying,
in intricate detail, the biomechanics of how animals poop and pee.”
Just in case you had to answer
the phone or listen to your nagging spouse while attempting to read the last
paragraph, I’ll repeat it for you.
There is a postdoctoral fellow at
Georgia Tech who has dedicated her “career to studying, in intricate detail,
the biomechanics of how animals poop and pee.”
Yep.
This article goes on to explain
about the wombat being a cousin of the koalas, also marsupials. They further burrow tunnels creating
hazardous conditions for livestock that can easily break legs.
 |
| Wombat |
Wombats are a food source for
Aboriginals, weighing on at about 40 pounds.
It would appear that being short, fat, with small tails and big noses,
and small ears, a wombat could easily be mistaken for a kid I knew in high
school named Joe Nusbaum. But I digress.
Still, the gist of this story is
just around the corner.
Wombats, according to this
Georgia Tech fellow, poop – drum roll, please – little cubes.
Yes, wombat poop is easily
identifiable by their dice-like bowel movements.
They produce up to 100 cubes of
poop every night!
Apparently they spread this
square poop about the outside of their burrows to serve as a ‘keep out’ sign.
There’s much more to this
science-oriented article than adolescent humor.
Of course, I could find nothing
of that sort. I could only imagine
perfectly stackable poop.
And now you can win that bar bet
about which animal poops cubes. You’re
welcome.
