Bandicoots visit our home

By Resident of Banjup Western Australia

"When we moved into our home about five years ago we became worried when we discovered something was continually raiding our rubbish. We thought it was wild dogs. As were sitting watching television one hot summers night we heard scurrying outside and ran to shoo the wild dogs away. Much to our delight we found it wasn't wild dogs at all, it was two animals we had never seen before."

"They were rat like in appearence and we thought they looked a lot like quokkas although we knew this was wrong. We asked friends but they didn't know either. Finally we found a picture on a road sign, identifying our visitors as bandicoots."

"These bandicoots visited us for a while and we named them Mr and Mrs Shadow because they came only at night."

Photo by Rachel Martinovich

"When some of our neighbours started to build new homes around us Mr and Mrs Shadow stopped visiting us and we were sad."

"At the beginning of this year we noticed that our cat food kept on disappearing. We know our cats couldn't have eaten it all the time. We were very happy when late one night we noticed a small bandicoot feeding on our cat food."

"We hear them every day now. Sometimes it's a small bandicoot and sometimes it's a big bandicoot. We think that perhaps we have a family of Bandicoots living nearby. Our cats don't mind sharing their food and often they sit and watch them eat. We wish the bandicoots would become our friends."

" We are happy they come!"