Happy International Wombat Day!

Happy International Wombat Day! A day to celebrate those cute marsupials from Down Under. It is so nice to see these mythological creatures getting some recognition.

What’s that you say? Wombats aren’t mythological? Of course they are!

I have had a near life-long quest to find a representative of the wombat species. I first learned about them in high school from an informative poster asking the question “Are you a wombat?”. It was in infographic with a nerdy boy standing there while lines indicated features of wombatness with text detailing the features.

At the time, no one could tell me what a wombat actually looked like. This was before the Internet age and you had to find information in old-style dead tree volumes known as books. Since no one knew what exactly the beast was or anything about its appearance, I concluded that they were mythological, talked about in stories, most likely the type involving animals and having some type of morality lesson at the end.

I did do a search within the school library and in the encyclopedias at the time, but there was vey little information other than they were relatively small, furry, marsupials living in Australia. Knowing the land Down Under has almost as many tall tales as Texas, I figured this was further evidence that wombats fell in the mythological category.

Of course if you do a search now for wombats upon the World Wide Web, you’ll find many ‘supposed’ images of wombats. I say supposed because with AI image generators being capable of making an image of darn near anything that can be imagined, images are no longer a viable source of veracity. You just can’t trust photos any more as evidence.

I know what you’re saying – why didn’t you just go to the zoo to see one? I tried. Twice.

Once was at the Taronga Zoo in Sydney, Australia. I went there as part of a birthday celebration nearly fifteen years ago. I’ve always wanted to visit that land, and decided I wasn’t getting any older so I’d best make the trip while I still had time. Among the many adventures I had in that land, one was a visit to the Taronga Zoo. Surely, they’d have wombats, if they truly existed.

No. No, they didn’t. I found the wombat enclosure, but it was empty. Not a furry face anywhere in the enclosure. I was greatly disappointed. Nor did I see any wombats on any other part of the trip. Not in Sydney, not in the Outback, nor in Cairns. Surely if the very country said to be the origin of the beasties does not have any of them it must be further evidence that they are non-existent.

Later upon retuning to Texas I went to the local zoo, upon a recommendation from my sister (who went to Australia with me) saying they had a wombat there. I went to the zoo, and eventually found the place where you were supposed to be allowed to hold one of the beasts. When I finally got there, they told me that the wombats had been transferred to a different zoo just the week before. Whether this whole situation was an elaborate prank upon my sister’s part, or the zoo was just part of the conspiracy to promote wombats as anything other than mythological I can’t be certain.

So, there you have it my Hordeling. I’m keeping a open mind, and much like Fox Mulder I want to believe, but until I can encounter one of these creatures personally, I refuse to admit their existence. (Yes, I can hear the conspiracy theorists screaming that with genetic manipulation a ‘wombat’ could be created artificially, but if it is a real, living physical object I’ll accept it as proof.) Here’s hoping that I can find one before I shuffle off this mortal coil.

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