So why are ...mice?... on the page of DUCKford university: :-D

Wombats
ohhhh
What's a wombat?
Australian nocturnal marsupial.
And what's their significance?
They go where they're going to go, almost indestructible. Someone from the SCA in Australia told us about them at a fire at Pennsic once.

When people build fences in Australia, like fences for sheep, they have to put in wombat gates. First you find out where the wombat trails are and you put the gates. They swing like dog doors (hinged and the top with spring-hinges either direction), and wombats can go through them easily, but no other animals can go through.

I got really fascinated after that story, and happened to be with people whose van broke down so it took us two weeks to get home. We spent ten days near Washington DC and I went to the Smithsonian where they have a stuffed wombat, and I went to the Library of Congress to look up wombats. They only had four references (not counting encyclopedias--only four books). One was in German and was from the 1930s. One was a kids' book.

So I was even MORE fascinated with a whole species which was hardly known in the U.S.

And years passed.

At a philosophy discussion once we made a hypothetical service award, to use as an example, and I called it "The Order of the Wombat." "Like if for example the king wanted to make a new member of the order of the wombat..." and Cathyn and AnneAliz, without any coaching or prompting stood up and acted out being the king and queen. It was really funny.

So "the order of the wombat" kind of stuck, and it's that same Duckford U. group plus Bohemond and Gunwaldt.

(AElflaed, writing in 2003, some years after both incidents.)

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