“Hoag and the Wombat”

           Finally, Hoag was on vacation.

           Hoag had not taken a vacation for many years. Over and over, Hoag had been voted most valuable employee at his garage, but now at last he was on vacation.

           And he had plans. Plans with a capital P for Pig, he thought as he flossed his tusky incisors on his first morning off.

           The night before, he had made a long list of all things he wanted to do on his vacation.

1. Patch the roof

2. Clean the pantry

 3. Clean out the gutters

4. Visit Aunt Mabel.

 And all the way down to...

 20. Read a book in the sun.

           He raced down his steps. He had left his list on his kitchen table, and he was ready to go, get to work , and start checking items off.

           But where was his list? It wasn’t on table, or counter, or floor.

           But what was on the floor,

           what was on the floor,

           was a wombat.

           A wombat gnawing on a table leg, surrounded by tiny bits of Hoag’s list.

           “A wombat,” Hoag exclaimed. “There are no wombats in North America”

           Hoag had once seen a film at the library on wombats, when he was piglet.

           “A wombat!”

           Then the wombat looked up at him, and Hoag thought he wombat smiled. Hoag, who was on vacation, smiled, too.

           “A wombat,” he sighed.

           That’s when Hoag noticed the hole, a wombat sized hole in his screen door.

           Hoag got a fresh sheet of paper and a pen.

           #1, he wrote, patch screen door.

           Then he sat still for a moment. He scratched out the number one and wrote above it.

           Feed wombat.

           And his table tipped beneath him. One leg was now shorter than the other three.

           With the speed and efficiency that had made him so often employee of the month at the garage, Hoag poured a bowl of cereal for the wombat, found an out-of-date phone book to prop his table leg, got some screen from the basement, and took out the “W” volume in the encyclopedia.

           After he had patched the screen, Hoag picked up the encyclopedia.

           “Wombats,” he read, “ have continuously growing teeth.”

           “All right then, Wombat,” Hoag shouted joyfully, “I will get you a big limb from my back yard for you to chew on.”

           Hoag went outside, to the tree that needed trimming. It had been on his list for vacation (#13). He took down the limb and carried it inside to present to Wombat.

           “Wombat,” he cried as he entered the kitchen. “This is for you.”

           But the wombat was asleep under the kitchen table. Hoag’s second list and his daily paper were shredded around Wombat’s sleeping body to make a nest. Hoag looked in the encyclopedia.

           “Wombats are nocturnal creatures.”

           So Hoag turned down the lights in the kitchen and left the wombat to his sleep. For the rest of the morning, Hoag sat in his back yard in the sunshine, but not with a book. He was thinking hard. That morning, Hoag had awoken without the tiniest thought of ever having a pet or even a roommate. It was now only midmorning, and a wombat had come to him and made a nest under his kitchen table.

           Wombat was so small, Hoag thought. How would he care for him?

           Then Hoag remembered his first list and his promised visit to Aunt Mabel. Aunt Mabel, now a very old hog, had reduced the number of her pets to twelve parakeets, but Hoag remembered that when he was a child, she had had a zoo of pets and a library on animals. She still had the library.

           Peeking into the kitchen to make sure the wombat was still asleep, Hoag washed his face and trotted to Aunt Mabel’s

           When they were settled with their tea and Hoag had introduced the subject, Aunt Mabel looked over her eyeglasses and sad.

           “What is a wombat?”

           “Well,” he replied, hesitating to speak to the expert on pets, “it’s a marsupial.”

           “Then there cannot be any here,” she told him firmly. “Perhaps you have an opossum.”

           All the same, she let him browse the library. She had thousands of books on animals, and Hoag look at the spine of each volume. He found, “Care and Feeding of the Cat,” “Care and Feeding of the dog,” “Equine personality,” and “Tropical Fish for Funny and Money.” He even found “Care and Feeding of Ant Farm Ants.”

           But nothing on wombats.

           Hoag went home dejected, but when he got home and found Wombat still sleeping quietly, he determined to do the best he could. He would do his best with the wombat, just as he did his most efficient best at the garage and earned so often “Employee of the Month.” He could at least patch the roof and clean the gutters so that when it rained, the roof would not leak and deluge the wombat.

           He put on his work clothes and started to head for the garage and his ladder, but instead he found himself sitting in a kitchen chair, watching Wombat sleep. His breath was so deep and even.

           When night fell, Wombat woke up and Hoag showed him the tree limb. While Hoag fixed his supper, Wombat gnawed happily away. He didn’t give all his attention to the limb though, but continued to take some bites out of the kitchen table.

           After supper — spaghetti for Hoag and cornflakes for the Wombat — Hoag settled into his easy chair. Wombat curled up at his feet. Hoag picked up the phone to call his Aunt Mabel, and Wombat gnawed on Hoag’s chair legs.

           “He is so sweet,” he told her, “with his little bare feet.”

           “That’s nice, Hoag,” Aunt Mabel told him. “But don’t wombats belong outside?”

           At bedtime, Hoag brushed his teeth and said goodnight to Wombat — he was not a nocturnal creature himself. He fell asleep to the noises of Wombat rooting around downstairs.

           That night, Hoag dreamed of being outside in the dark, burrowing in the tree roots and sitting in the limbs. His dream so convinced him that he woke up confused.

           Downstairs, shaved and brushed and clean himself, Hoag saw that Wombat had helped himself to a serving of cornflakes and that he was already asleep.

           It would be a long day to wait for the wombat to wake up, but Hoag accomplished many of the items on his list and also mended a hole in the living room carpet.

           When the wombat woke that night, he smiled at Hoag and burrowed his head into the crook of Hoag’s forearm. But he wasn’t interested in corn flakes.

           “Aren’t you hungry, Wombat? Hoag asked.

           Wombat just looked out the kitchen window toward the trees. Quickly, Hoag took down his encyclopedia (which his efficient self had somehow forgotten to put away the night before, and now parts of the “W” volume had been shredded for the nest). Hoag could still read,

           “Wombats eat grasses, the inner bark of trees and shrubs, and occasionally fungi. “

           ”Well, I’ve been feeding you the wrong things.” He dashed out the back door. He gathered grass clippings and scraped some bark from an azalea shrub. The fungi, he thought, would have to wait until the next day.

           He took his load into the kitchen and set it in front of Wombat who ate ferociously. Again, Hoag fell asleep to the sound of Wombat rooting downstairs.

           The next day, the third day of vacation, seemed long to Hoag as he waited for Wombat to wake up. He had completed all of his projects, and not even hunting in the woods for sweet mushrooms — for Hoag was lover of and expert on fungi himself — made the hours pass more quickly.

           That night, Wombat nuzzled the crook of Hoag’s arm, but he wouldn’t eat, not even the mushrooms. Hoag consulted the encyclopedia, but it said nothing about what to do with a wombat who wouldn’t eat. Hoag touched Wombat’s head to feel for fever, but he didn’t know what a wombat fever might feel like.

           Hoag went to bed that night, concerned and sleepless, even though he heard the same sounds coming from the kitchen as every night before.

           In the morning, Hoag’s eyes were bleary from a night spent tossing in bed. In all his life, he had always slept peacefully. And he was on vacation. Nothing to worry about, he told himself as he flossed. He knew Wombat would be fine, soundly asleep under the kitchen table this morning. He would find a few more tears in the rug and his kitchen table would tip a little more from Wombat’s nighttime chewing. He would find the grasses and fungi gone.

           And sure enough, there were the rug tears, and the table legs had lost a little more luster from Wombat’s gnawing. Wombat, however, was not asleep, and the grasses lay exactly where Hoag had left them. Wombat stared out the window.

           When he saw Hoag, Wombat nuzzled his head against his forearm, and Hoag thought about what Aunt Mabel had said.

           “Don’t wombats belong outside?”

           And Hoag knew it was true. There were no books on care and feeding of the wombat and nothing in the “W” volume about keeping them as pets.

           So Hoag patted Wombat on the head and opened the screen door, and Wombat butted his head against Hoag’s leg as he passed through the door. But pass through the door he did.

           Hoag sat down quietly at his kitchen table. Hoag, the hard worker, so many times Employee of the Month, could not think what would be the most efficient thing to do. He sat for many hours, and his table wobbled beneath him.

           Late in the afternoon, he called his Aunt Mabel who said,

           “Come over for more tea.”

           Aunt Mabel gave him cake and tea and showed him a picture of a dog which she had drawn. She did not ask about the wombat, but she kissed him on his tusky cheek before he left.

           Hoag felt a little better when he went home. Someday, he though, he would refinish his table and repair the legs, and someday Wombat would come to play in his yard.

           But not just yet, he thought.

           He drew a picture of Wombat and hung it on the kitchen wall.

           Time did pass. Vacation ended. He earned Most Valuable Employee award many more times. Summer passed and passed again, and he took another vacation. He completed all the tasks on his list and began to think about refinishing his table.

           On the last afternoon of vacation, he took a book outside to read, but he dozed in his hammock until dusk when a soft touch on his hoof woke him.

           It was Wombat, who looked up at him, and Hoag thought he smiled. Hoag smiled, too, and wondered about the wombat’s adventures, but all he did was watch the Wombat play in the yard as night fell.