Small encounter with a local
MT Buller identity and well known photographer Tony (Harro) Harrington was out shooting some blizzard pics when he had an unusual encounter with one of the mountain’s little creatures.
“I’m not normally up on the mountain during summer and therefore don’t know a lot about the real ‘locals’ who are hibernating beneath the snowpack during the winter season,” Harro said.
“So it was with great surprise at noon on a Sunday and with a temperature of -5.4 degrees, I saw this little critter bounding across the snow in circles on top of the mountain during the blizzard, no doubt looking for somewhere a lot warmer.
“He even came right up and sat next to my ski boot in the middle of a wide open space looking for a littler shelter, before bounding off again and finding protection under a small hole in a paling of one of the lift huts,” Harro related.
On getting back to The Gallery in the Village Square and downloading the photos Harro Google searched on the computer to see what this creature was called.
He (or was it a she?) is an ‘Agile Antechinus’, a type of a small carnivorous marsupial.
“They feed on a variety of insects and small vertebrae,” Harro found.
“They have a highly synchronised annual two week breeding season where all the males promptly die from stress after mating.”