There’s no way around it, when we live with nature, we affect nature and it affects us. 

It’s in the front of my mind when trimming back plants around our yard. Tiny crab spiders launch themselves on silken ropes, and plant hoppers leap skyward just as I’m about to put the cuttings in the green waste bin. Oops, close call for them and I carefully pop them back in the garden. And I’m guilty of leaving huge sheets of cobwebs adorning our eaves and windows, worried for the spiders who call it home and the wattlebirds that swoop in, who call the spiders ‘dinner’. 

But the concept of human impact was really brought home this week, as we finally started to replace our very old, wooden paling fence. As the fence has started to rot and lean, I’ve let the vines and ferns take over. They snake up the wood, holding it all together and the dense tangle of greenery has provided shelter and safety to countless animals. And the fishbone ferns multiplying at its base have provided home to bandicoots.

Bandicoots are often mistaken for rats and that’s actually what happened as the tradies, knee deep in vegetation, shrieked as what they thought was a rat hopped out of the bracken they were noisily removing. 

Long-nosed bandicoots are nocturnal and spend the day curled up in logs or in shallow holes in the ground, lined with grasses and other foliage. You might have spotted finger-deep holes in your garden where the bandis stick their long snouts, sniffing out, well, pretty much everything. They happily feast on insects, lawn grubs, fruits, roots, underground bulbs, cockroaches, mice and even dog food left outside.

The one that was hoisted aloft by the tradies was only young and I quickly scooped it up and gave it the once over. Bandicoots are on their own from around 60 days old and this one was definitely independent. 

It was no use releasing her straight away with the work ongoing so I grabbed a box, lined it with leaf litter and ferns, made some ventilation holes and left her in the shade on our porch. Now to tell you the next bit I have to reveal that I did peak in the box once or twice (okay, three or four times) but it was really lovely to see her curled up and snoozing away after what must have been a scary morning. 

As night fell, I put the box on its side next to a similarly undergrowth-dense spot in my yard. I watched as she turned her snout up at the new spot and went in search of her ferny home… which was unfortunately no longer there.

While a lot of the greenery has to go to physically remove the fence, we decided that we’d leave a fair chunk of the masses of fishbone fern in place to give the bandis (and their friends) somewhere to shelter until we can establish a new habitat alongside the new fence. After all, our home is their home and we're keen for them to stay. 

To learn how to make a bandicoot bungalow and what to plant to attract these nocturnal marsupials to your yard, head here