Scrumptious Scats, Seriously

Elizabeth Morgan

Is one a sad and pitiable creature when the high point of the day is finding a freshly laid, grassy green and almost perfectly square wombat poo, precariously perched on a rock? Is one becoming too solitary, like Vombatus ursinus? I certainly don’t think so. It’s hard to explain the joy evoked by a freshly laid scat. “I might live alone but I’ve been busy checking out who else’s been around and what they’re up to,” the wombat tells us with it faeces. And look at that wonderful arrangement. There’s architecture, ikebana, mechanical engineering and still life – all rolled into one playful plop. The late environmental philosopher Val Plumwood wrote of her wombat companion Birubi that he “was an intelligent herbivore, a vegetarian, I believe, in the full sense, both through his biological inheritance and through his convictions”.* Just after the horrific bushfires in summer 2019-2020, I helped a friend with her ‘wildlife cafes’ in the firegrounds in the Blue Mountains. Almost nothing was sweeter than arriving to find the previous day’s meal of apples, carrots and sweet potato all gone – except being privy to a viewing of the Cubist painting left behind as a thank you.

• Plumwood, Val (2012). "A wombat wake: In memorium of Birubi," in The Eye of the Crocodile. Edited by Lorraine Shannon. ANU Press, Canberra.