Wednesday 03 August 2005 7:00:18 pm

Reply from Mr Simon

Hi Archie,

I was wondering this myself, actually, until this morning when we got to practice on an echidna that got killed yesterday on the road.

The short answer is: carefully!!

Actually, if you walk up behind it, kneel down with knees on either side and bring your hands in from the front, you kind of smooth the spines down so that they dont prick your hands. You actually put your hands just behind its front legs and lift. Usually it tries to grab into the ground, but when you lift it up it curls up so that you can't really see its body. I've got some photos showing this (which I'll bring back to Yande) from when we found the echidna called Big Momma.