Recently we had seen a young wallaby making its first forays out of its mother's pouch, racing about in the mad dashes and then back to the pouch. It is one of the sights we like to watch as you can just see the exuberance in the discovery of how, after so long in the pouch they can take leaps and bounds in their new world.
We have also just found a new Diamond Python not too long out of the egg (likely the result of the mating in our lily bowl last October) and now discovering its world, which at the moment is amongst our passionfruit vine, well out of sight of predators.
Youngsters are always vulnerable in these early stages before they have developed awareness of the dangers.
We have had one of the adult Diamond Pythons around the garden as the weather has not been too cold and today it caught the young wallaby on a venture away from mum.
I didn't see the initial capture, only coming upon the scene when most of the wallaby was swallowed. It is almost three years since I recorded the previous capture of a young wallaby and it is obvious that the pythons know when youngsters are around and the areas they frequent, so they just await their opportunity to strike.
Whether the young python survives the perils that await it we may not know but the chances are stacked against it, as of the clutch of around a dozen eggs only one or two will get to reach adulthood.
Mother wallaby stayed nearby for a few hours waiting for its youngster to come back but then moved off to feed and with the youngster gone will probably start the development of the next embryo that it has stored from its last mating.
