Will Cuppy Tonight: "More About Wombats" (from "How to Attract the Wombat")

My poor weather-beaten old copy
of How to Attract the Wombat

"I found that I do have a slight tendency to write books purporting to teach how to do thus and so, and that I am too likely to stray from the main point, or omit it altogether, leaving the reader in what has been called, for some reason I have never quite understood, the lurch. Obviously, this is wrong. It may very well affect certain types with a sense of unfulfillment, an uneasy suspicion that they have been had. In a way it is only fair that I should explain the Wombat a little more fully, as long as I brought the subject up in the first place."

-- Will Cuppy, in "More About Wombats"

More About
Wombats

(from How to Attract the Wombat)

It has been brought to my attention, none too tactfully, that a book with the word "Wombat" in the title should contain more about Wombats than seems to be the case with How to Attract the Wombat up to the late point I have now reached, and I thank God I have reached it. I suppose the fellow meant more words by actual count, irrespective of the force and cogency of the words I had already written. "More about Wombats" is the way it was put to me, and that's all I can tell you.

Since I do not speak this person's language, I can only guess at his meanings and motives. All I really know about him is that a heavy glass bowl of Goldfish fell on his head when he was two years old (accidentally, he says), that what came out of him at the moment of impact you wouldn't believe, that some really valuable fish perished in the excitement, and that he survived to become a power in the literary world of New York, one whose least suggestion it is folly to disregard and ruin to oppose. H'm!

When he butted in the other day, as I was showing the outline of my book to somebody else, I had the distinct impression that he had never heard of a Wombat before. "Wombat!" he exclaimed. "Did you say Wombat?" I was looking straight into his face, if you could call it a face, and I could see him struggling inwardly for some frame of reference, as he would phrase it. I replied rather coolly, "Why yes, I said Wombat."

It took him exactly one minute to recover his poise, grab my synopsis, fix all four eyes on the last line, and make his considered judgment: "More about Wombats." If I had let him, he would have gone on to tell me that it would contribute to the esthetic effect of the whole, sort of knit it up, as it were, if I had more on the Wombat right there. He's all for those da capo effects in his own writings, always pounding away at his opening stuff as much as the traffic will bear, then harking back to the damn thing at the end, when all you want on this earth is to forget it. I understand he used to recommend that bit of technique -- and a fine one it is, in its place -- in his English One class at the University. It's very funny how he happened to leave there, too. I wish I had time to tell you.

Mind you, when this happened I was celebrating the completion of my manuscript, a state of affairs roughly comparable to release from a long jail rap into the sunlight and freedom, joyful communion with the birds and the flowers, and access to other phenomena too numerous to mention. I mean there is a considerable difference to the author between a book that is finished and a book that is not. So what did I do? I could have taken that one over the eight and called for another on top of that. But you know me. One dirty look from however low a source and I go in for soul-searching -- the sober, or most painful, kind. To spare you the details, I found that I do have a slight tendency to write books purporting to teach how to do thus and so, and that I am too likely to stray from the main point, or omit it altogether, leaving the reader in what has been called, for some reason I have never quite understood, the lurch. Obviously, this is wrong. It may very well affect certain types with a sense of unfulfillment, an uneasy suspicion that they have been had. In a way it is only fair that I should explain the Wombat a little more fully, as long as I brought the subject up in the first place.

Since I did not tell everything I know in my earlier remarks [see last night's installment, "The Wombat" -- Ed.], perhaps a paragraph or two on the Wombat as a pet would not come amiss. The burrowing habits of which I spoke offer the Wombat owner an interesting first-hand study of a true tunneller, whether the animal is digging into the underpinning of your residence or honeycombing the yard with subterranean passages in all directions. As Wombats seldom succeed in bringing down a large, solidly constructed house, you may as well dismiss your fears on that score and take a chance. Naturally, some people are unnerved at the thought that the Wombat is out there doing his best. Just forget it.

When the Wombat is excavating a tunnel, note that he often lies on his side, digging at the earth with his claws and his hard nose, an organ which is beautifully adapted to the purpose. You don't see that every day. Once he has started a tunnel, it is practically impossible to get him out again, for Mother Nature impels him to proceed until he has gone a hundred feet or so along under the sod and constructed at the end of the passage a nesting chamber for his comfort and repose. Even if you catch him at the mouth of the hole and attempt to extract him with a lasso or a shepherd's crook, you can't. He just braces himself against the earth with his powerful hands and feet and remains there indefinitely, a real lesson in endurance and stick-to-it-iveness.

Nor can you dig him out with any degree of success. He keeps ahead of you and before you know it you are spading up the adjoining back yard like one possessed. Neighbors being what they are, you are in for a little discussion on just what you think you are doing. This is known in the courts as Wombat trouble.

If there are small children around, they are sure to find a Wombat's burrows wonderful places to explore. They will probably crawl into one of them in an effort to reach the bark-lined nesting chamber and establish a playhouse there, a marvelous prospect for them but one which should be discouraged in view of possible cave-ins and total lack of ventilation. Such an adventure cannot be good for a child, and actual harm might come of it. Simply tell them not to go near those burrows that the Wombat made and you should have no further difficulty. If that doesn't work out, I'm sure some remedy can be found, short of getting rid of the children.

Having the yard full of holes, of course, might be dangerous even to grownups who are not willing to watch where they're going. Wombat holes have proved to be something of a nuisance to horses and cattle in Australia and Tasmania, and the stories that have drifted over here about it frighten the timid. Nonsense! You can stay in the house if you have to and observe your Wombat or Wombats through the window. If you must go outside, be careful, that's all. Wombat fanciers with exceptionally brittle bones might do well to have the condition attended to. If such persons are too lazy to see a doctor, they should at least take large doses of whatever vitamins are good for such things, try to build up their resistance with a spring tonic -- some calcium mixture, perhaps -- and they will soon be ready to own a Wombat. The wheel chair simply yawns for persons who will not take even the most ordinary precautions. Why blame it all on the Wombat?

Wombats who are kept outside need hardly any care. In a state of nature their diet consists largely of grass and the bark and roots of young trees and shrubs. If there is anything of the kind in your yard, it would be nice for the Wombat, and you could do lots of research on his gnawing methods. If you have a favorite tree you want gnawed, it might be simpler to get a Beaver to do it. Beavers accomplish more in the same length of time and they work longer hours.

The Wombat who is kept inside the house also deserves a word in any Wombat manual such as this. Like any nocturnal creature, he sleeps most of the day in his straw-filled box, snoring contentedly and somewhat loudly, if you care for that. About all this gets you is the opportunity to say you have a pet Wombat, a simple truth which is hard to demonstrate to visitors. All they see is a patch or two of brownish fur under the straw, but some of them are willing to believe that what they are looking at is a Wombat. The straw in the Wombat's box should be changed every few days. Every few minutes would be better.

At night the Wombat wakes up and starts living. If you strongly disapprove of this routine, and I find many people do, you might hint to him that no good will come of it, that there is no sense in it, and that you do not do it yourself. Tell him to stop sleeping his brains out in the daytime and go to bed at a decent hour, and you might add that we were never intended to turn night into day. You will then have done your duty as you see it, but I doubt if the Wombat will pay much attention. I am constantly receiving similar advice myself and it appears to make no perceptible change in my schedule. Some are built that way, some aren't. It would be my guess that the Wombat has no desire to be more like other people.

If you resemble the average pet owner, you should be able to cope handily enough with the Wombat's nocturnal activities around the house. You would hardly know he is there, unless you happen to hear him tearing up the floor by way of getting on with a new nesting chamber. You'd better do something about that, too. I suggest that you have the floors of your home reinforced with a layer of concrete over the boards and perhaps a layer of asphalt on top of that. Any road construction gang will do the job at reasonable rates if you catch them during their slack season. The Wombat will go through it in time, but it will slow him up considerably.

Meanwhile, you can be thinking up other measures, the more the better. Why not revise your philosophy of life a trifle and sleep during the day, even if this does involve admitting that the Wombat was right, after all? It's no time to quibble. Should your business suffer too much from the new time scheme, should you find it impossible to carry it on while most of your clients or customers are unconscious, why not retire from the whole tiresome grind and take it easy? I understand this can be arranged upon payment of a small fee or something of the sort, and the people who have done it say it is fine. You probably need a good rest, anyway. You might travel, for one thing, leaving your house and grounds to the Wombat, lock, stock, and barrel.

I trust I have shown that a Wombat in the home makes all the difference. If you require more proof, I point to the experience of Mrs. O'Connell, of Bullallaba, New South Wales, who brought up a Wombat from the age of six months and never regretted it for one moment. This Wombat loved to be fondled in her arms and would follow her around with obvious devotion until she fed him. Although he preferred lettuce leaves, cabbage stalks and milk, he would accept scraps or anything and show his gratitude, just how I couldn't say. No trouble at all.

Charlie, as we may call him, for I think of all Wombats as Charlie, added to the gayety of the O'Connell household by rolling over and by rearing up on his hind legs and attempting to butt like a goat, a trick Mrs. O'Connell seems to have found more amusing than otherwise. I fancy her as a solid old body who was not likely to be upset by any amount of butting by a mere Wombat. We are told nothing of any spells of rage, accompanied by rather nasty biting, a characteristic of some Wombats. He didn't even growl.

Although Charlie was completely free and had burrows in the garden, he never damaged a plant or a flower. Nor did he ever keep a soul from getting his proper sleep at night. Mrs. O'Connell loved to talk about him and there was no word to any of her cronies about any vices whatever. In short, if Charlie had a single fault, large or small, you'd never hear it from Mrs. O'Connell. He was pure joy and delight as a pet and a pal. I, for one, believe that Mrs. O'Connell was telling the truth as she saw it, or at least part of it.

My file on famous Wombats of history is not as complete as I could wish, but I can give you an example or two. The first Wombat ever seen in England was taken there from Bass Strait by a Mr. Brown, a wandering botanist, somewhere around the beginning of the last century (probably in 1807, though I cannot be certain of this), and lived for two years in the house of Mr. Clift, of the Royal College of Surgeons. Here the Wombat's acquaintance was made by Sir Everard Home, the great anatomist and surgeon, whose paper (1808) on the animal has been used by naturalists ever since, generally in indirect quotation so that you can't tell what he actually wrote.

According to one scientist, Sir Everard found his new friend "not unintelligent," though no particulars are given. That's not quite the same as saying that the Wombat is as smart as a whip, though it does show that Sir Everard did not regard him as completely hopeless. The scientist throws in the following on his own: "In captivity it [The Wombat] is as a rule amiable, the amiability being possibly associated with stupidity." What do you make of that? I must say it's a fine way to speak of an animal who is trying to develop the better side of his nature, and succeeding.

In view of the varying opinions about the Wombat's mentality, one may conclude that some Wombats are brighter than others. Or perhaps it would be safer to say that some are dumber than others. Be that as it may, the most provocative, or do I mean disturbing, sentence I have encountered in my researches concerns the peculiar manner or mood of the Wombat's biting with his really formidable chisel-like teeth, a thing I mentioned in my shorter piece on the Wombat because it was essential to even the briefest report. It is fitting that we remind ourselves of it now, when we are about to say farewell to the Wombat.

The source of that information is Ellis Troughton's recent work, Furred Animals of Australia, where the author writes of Sir Everard's Wombat, perhaps in that great man's own words, or nearly so: "It good-naturedly allowed children to pull or carry it about, and if it bit them it did not appear to do so severely or in anger." It just bit them. You who hope to understand the Wombat will do well to read that sentence again. And reread it. And ponder.

I shall have to omit the bulk of my material on Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Wombat, the very thing I was leading up to. Christina tells us that when she lived at Tudor House with Gabriel, he had a Wombat, an Owl named Bobby, a Wood-chuck, and a Deer. The Wombat slept in a silver épergne in the middle of the dining-table -- a good-sized épergne, I should think, as Wombats often run to a length of forty inches. The Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson used to call and there is a possibility that he turned the drowsy creature into the Dormouse of the Mad Tea Party, though I should think that if he wanted a model for a Dormouse he might have used a Dormouse. Christina put a Wombat into her poem, "Goblin Market," probably the same one.

Mr. Benson recalls other members of the Rossetti ménage without mentioning where they parked themselves: a Chameleon, a Salamander, a Raccoon, an Armadillo, a Zebu, and a Kangaroo. I have also heard somewhere about a white Bull and a white Peacock, who crawled under the sofa one day and died there -- a sensitive bird, no doubt. It is clear that with such a family running around regardless, Rossetti was hardly the man to strain at a Wombat. Indeed, he had a second one after the first had passed on, which would indicate that he found Wombats a necessity in every well-regulated home, if you will excuse that imperfect description of Tudor House. The right adjective does not occur to me.

I had hoped to trace the influence of Wombats on Rossetti's poems and right on up to the works of our greatest living novelist (you heard me), Angela Thirkell, who is some sort of relative of his by marriage, I believe. The Wombat who slept in the silver épergne may well be responsible for Mrs. Thirkell's strange, almost morbid, interest in the Golden-crested Mippet. I had stuff like that, all very cultural and significant, but there isn't a minute to spare as we rush to press. Ask me later, will you? (Later: What I meant to say was that Mrs. Thirkell is the niece of Burne-Jones on her mother's side -- no relation to Rossetti. As it is practically impossible to tell the two men apart, I feel that my theory still holds up.)

And now that we are bidding farewell to the Wombat, it strikes me as rather a good idea. Telling you more about Wombats has served to clarify my own views in some respects, so much so that I wonder what I could have been thinking of before. I ask myself, is it fair to a Wombat to try to lure him away from Australia and Tasmania, where he can dig up practically the whole of the antipodes if he chooses, and nobody cares? He does so love to play!

Would it not be downright cruel to keep him in semi-captivity in a town or city, where the opportunities for wreaking havoc and destruction upon the landscape are necessarily so limited? In a word, is it right to attract Wombats? There is a bright side to all this, however, for I have just called up the Bronx Zoo and they tell me you can't get one, anyway, unless you are an accredited zoological institution -- and who is?


TOMORROW in WILL CUPPY TONIGHT: "Cleopatra" (from The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody)


THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY TONIGHT and WILL CUPPY TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

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