On 27 Nov 2006 23:48:10 GMT, wombat@fancier.net found these unused words
floating about:

>Can someone tell me whether Wombats live only in Australia,
>or also on other continents?
>
>Apart from zoos, of course.
>
>18

The Chicago Cubs had wombats this fall.
That's why the got that far.

wombat@fancier.net wrote:
> Can someone tell me whether Wombats live only in Australia,
> or also on other continents?
>
> Apart from zoos, of course.
>
> 18

Wombats: The mats used by Taxi drivers to keep their cars clean for
very important deliveries.

On 28 Nov 2006 23:26:27 -0800, kingpin+nntp@lumbercartel.ca found these
unused words floating about:

>wombat@fancier.net wrote:
>> Can someone tell me whether Wombats live only in Australia,
>> or also on other continents?
>>
>> Apart from zoos, of course.
>
>Wombats: The mats used by Taxi drivers to keep their cars clean for
>very important deliveries.

Wombat: What you have when you hit a home run.

kingpin+nntp@lumbercartel.ca wrote:

> wombat@fancier.net wrote:
>> Can someone tell me whether Wombats live only in Australia,
>> or also on other continents?
>>
>> Apart from zoos, of course.
>>
>> 18
>
> Wombats: The mats used by Taxi drivers to keep their cars clean for
> very important deliveries.

Good one. Taxi drivers hate those deliveries.

Wombats are an Australian marsupial. A full description is at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wombat

Australia tends to have a marsupial equivalent for the "placental" animals
of Europe. So we have marsupial wolves or marsupial moles. This seems to
be because Australia became an island at a very early date, and evolution
went down a different path here. The fact that we still have wolves or
moles of some kind suggests that our marsupials were filling the same
niches in the environment.

Placental animals, like humans, develop inside the womb until they are
strong enough to survive outside. Marsupial animals are born at an earlier
stage of fetal development. I have read that a baby at birth can be only
one or two inches long. They travel through the mother's fur to her pouch,
and get hold of a teat. The mother expands that teat until it fills the
baby's mouth and locks the baby on, then squirts the milk in, because the
baby isn't strong enough to suck.

The Koala is not a bear, but a marsupial possum. The ones you see tourists
holding are relative babies. One night a full-grown one crossed the road
in front of our car. It would have been as big as an adult wombat. If we
had hit it, both would have suffered some damage. A boss of mine damaged
his car in a collision with a wombat in South Eastern Victoria.

There is a famous road warning sign in South Australia at the beginning of
the Nullarbor ("no trees") Highway with icons of a camel, a wombat and a
kangaroo and the distance along which you will find them: "Next 88 Km." It
is on Google Images.

Doug Laidlaw,
Bendigo, Vic Australia ("The Centrepiece of Victoria")
Registered Linux user.
--
We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
- Winston Churchill

On Thursday 30 November 2006 03:51, Doug Laidlaw stood up and addressed the
masses in /alt.os.linux.mandrake/ as follows...:

> Australia tends to have a marsupial equivalent for the "placental" animals
> of Europe. So we have marsupial wolves or marsupial moles. This seems to
> be because Australia became an island at a very early date, and evolution
> went down a different path here. The fact that we still have wolves or
> moles of some kind suggests that our marsupials were filling the same
> niches in the environment.

Are you sure about those marsupial wolves still existing, Doug? For what
I've read about them - or at least, the ones called "Tasmanian tiger"
because of their stripes - the last one died in captivity (in a zoo) in
1937.

So if marsupial wolves still exist, then there must have been more than one
subspecies of them. Of course, I'm not an Australian myself, which is why
I'm asking you about it. I've had a relationship with an Australian women
once, but she had never even heard of the Tasmanian tiger. She did know a
lot of the details on other marsupial species, though.

Allegedly, the sheep herders had caused their extinction because they were
believed to have been attacking sheep, which caused a massive hunt for
Tasmanian tigers to go on for several years. A false premise, as it would
later turn out, as the sheep may have been attacked by Tasmanian devils
instead.

Oh, and by the way, I was also surprised to hear that Australia is not the
only part of the world with marsupial animals. Allegedly, there are a few
(smaller ones) of those on the American continent as well, but I forgot
whether it's North America or South America.

--
With kind regards,

*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

* Aragorn [2006-11-30]:
>
> Oh, and by the way, I was also surprised to hear that Australia is not the
> only part of the world with marsupial animals. Allegedly, there are a few
> (smaller ones) of those on the American continent as well, but I forgot
> whether it's North America or South America.
>
[..msg snipped..]
__________________________________________________ ___________
Thu Nov 30 13:32:47 CST 2006

We have a fairly good saturation of "possums" Aragorn, but they seem
out of step with the majority of our critters.

Opossum \O*pos"sum\, n. [Of N. American Indian origin.]
Any American marsupial of the genera {Didelphys} and
{Chironectes}. The common species of the United States is
{Didelphys Virginiana}.

--
Olly P "On the Gulf of Mexico"

OllyP wrote:
> * Aragorn [2006-11-30]:
>> Oh, and by the way, I was also surprised to hear that Australia is not the
>> only part of the world with marsupial animals. Allegedly, there are a few
>> (smaller ones) of those on the American continent as well, but I forgot
>> whether it's North America or South America.
>>
> [..msg snipped..]
> __________________________________________________ ___________
> Thu Nov 30 13:32:47 CST 2006
>
> We have a fairly good saturation of "possums" Aragorn, but they seem
> out of step with the majority of our critters.
>
> Opossum \O*pos"sum\, n. [Of N. American Indian origin.]
> Any American marsupial of the genera {Didelphys} and
> {Chironectes}. The common species of the United States is
> {Didelphys Virginiana}.
>

And they are working their way north. Although originally found only in
the southern US, they tend to hitchhike north on trucks of produce.
They are managing to cope with Canadian winters and are becoming more
common here.

Donald

On 2006-11-30, Donald Tees wrote:
> OllyP wrote:
>> * Aragorn [2006-11-30]:
>>> Oh, and by the way, I was also surprised to hear that Australia is not the
>>> only part of the world with marsupial animals. Allegedly, there are a few
>>> (smaller ones) of those on the American continent as well, but I forgot
>>> whether it's North America or South America.
>>>
>> [..msg snipped..]
>> __________________________________________________ ___________
>> Thu Nov 30 13:32:47 CST 2006
>>
>> We have a fairly good saturation of "possums" Aragorn, but they seem
>> out of step with the majority of our critters.
>>
>> Opossum \O*pos"sum\, n. [Of N. American Indian origin.]
>> Any American marsupial of the genera {Didelphys} and
>> {Chironectes}. The common species of the United States is
>> {Didelphys Virginiana}.
>>
>
> And they are working their way north. Although originally found only in
> the southern US, they tend to hitchhike north on trucks of produce.
> They are managing to cope with Canadian winters and are becoming more
> common here.

Some were _deliberately_ brought from south-eastern USA to
the Pacific Northwest to use for food. Now, they're all
over the place. :-( My wife admits some of her ancestors
were probably among those who brought the varmints.

In Oregon, there's a new answer to the old question:

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?

A: To show the possum it could be done.

--
Robert Riches
spamtrap42@verizon.net
(Yes, that is one of my email addresses.)