Above: Elisha Proctor brought Penny in to The Courier office last week to show her progress.
Penny the Puggle, the baby Echidna orphaned after the death of her mother, and saved by Wee Waa’s Elisha Proctor is thriving, Elisha reports.
“Penny is growing spikes, which are still fairly soft, and has eaten her first ants,” Elisha said. “She has been out in the dirt and loves burrowing through the leaves.”
Elisha said Penny was doing well. Her diet advisor is the Dubbo Zoo.
“She was taking all day to drink 60 mls of milk now she drinks four times as much” said Elisha.
“She loves a bath and walks around in the sink. She gets on with our two dogs, a cattle dog and a poodle – they just ignore her.
“At the moment she is an ‘inside echidna’ but will be increasingly going outside and ultimately be returned to the wild.”
Elisha acknowledged that not many people knew baby echidnas are called ‘puggles.’
Even fewer have actually seen one.
She recalled how Penny had come into the Proctor household.
“My husband Robert found the mother Echidna dead on the farm he was working on near Burren Junction and saw her baby moving,” said Elisha.
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