It was late one night when Manar, a severely injured adult female wombat, was brought to us. She had a fractured skull and jaw , severe concussion and dehydration.The rescuer had noticed her by the side of the road in the morning but thought that she was dead . On his way home in the afternoon he noticed that she made a slight movement and stopped and rescued her . She was barely alive. Thus began a long relationship with a dear, gentle but wild creature who one day found the call of the wild strong enough to leave our care and have a second chance at life.
For months Manar required hand feeding using a large bladder syringe. She was unable to chew food so we prepared a slurry of blended grass, pellets wombat formula and Nutrigel. Feeding was always a messy time, but Manar enjoyed her food. For a wombat that should have been almost 30kgs she only weighed 17kgs. She was content to sleep for long hours safe and cosy in a large bin. It was easy to fall asleep on the lounge chair with Manar asleep in your arms.
Over the months Manar had several operations and had an infected front tooth removed.After her tooth extraction she began putting on weight and became more animated in her behaviour. She developed a friendship with a rescued lamb and they spent hours playing together. She also enjoyed sleeping in a hollow log in the nursery wombat enclosure where she stayed during daylight hours. At night we let her out for a walk with a small flashing light attached to a collar. She still had some while to go in recovering from her head injury and was not yet in a position to be released although she was now eating well.
One night while out wandering around we lost sight of Manar which caused great concern. Although we searched high and low we could not see her flashing light. How pleased we were when a neighbour reported seeing a wombat walking down one of the rural roads in our vicinity. Manar was also very happy to be home again and spent the next 24 hours just sleeping.
Manar kept improving and we could tell by her digging and other behaviour that she was wanting to leave. We were not so confident that she had fully recovered and would have been happy for her to spend the rest of her days with us, but it was not to be and one day she managed to escape her nursery enclosure and was gone before we knew it. Again we thought neighbours would report seeing her and despite weeks of searching she seemed to have vanished. She had been with us 18 months.
We can only hope she is living a free and enjoyable life and perhaps, just maybe, we might see her one more time soon.She really was a very dear, gentle and loving creature and we still miss her greatly.