And I’m embarrassed to say the wombat is winning! Embarrassed because, despite years of troubleshooting in the toughest of corporate environments and a postgraduate education at a leading business school, he’s continued to out-fox me for the past year!
Now I’ve decided this is not just any wombat; he is possibly the most persistent wombat in the world. My efforts to corrale him have been thorough and ongoing, but pale in significance to his efforts to get in. Get in to where? Well, it’s nowhere exciting. Not a lush pasture. Not a crunchy vegetable garden. It’s simply the horse arena. A bare dirt quadrangle with a few weeds here and there.
Yet every week he digs under the solid steel gates and re-creates a cavernous pit at the entrance of the arena. And so every weekend it’s my job to fill in the hole, so the horse doesn’t fall in it and break his leg.
I’ve tried leaving the gate open; he still digs the holes. I’ve tried putting obstacles in his path; he simply digs under them. Or he moves to the gate at the other end of the arena.
Now I like wombats, and this might not seem like an issue. After all, it’s just a little bit of a hole, right? Hardly! Sure, it started off small, but it’s now bigger than a back yard wading pool and growing in size every week.
Well this week I’ve tried a new plan. I’m trying to coax him away with lures of more tasty treats. So I’ve just left a smorgasbord of carrots, horse muesli and Lucerne at the gate. If the little guy has any taste at all, surely he’ll prefer these treats over the bitter weeds in the arena.
Stay tuned and I’ll update you next week on how I go…
