I know you’re joking. They taste more like bandicoot.
Actually, I recall one of the episodes of Gourmet Farmer (or whatever that Matthew Evans in Tassie show was). They got some mutton birds (shearwaters -a type of petrel) from someone who could legally harvest them, and the cooked them up. He reported they taste like very oily strong fish - I guess you are what you eat…
Incidentally, I was talking just last week to a bloke in Gippsland who knows an old-timer down there who as a kid used to go mutton-birding on the Bass Strait islands. He repeated what I’d read in an article once: those old-timers would reach into the burrow. If it felt warm, they grab the chick(s). If if felt cold, they’d back out, because that meant there might be a tiger snake. The tiger snakes apparently have evolved to grow larger/quicker on those islands than anywhere else, feeding on whatever they can eat (mostly insects etc) in order to get most of the year’s protein the the few weeks after chicks hatch, but before they get msimply too big for them to swallow.
It is very small and doesn’t look rat-like, but who knows. We have a school next door with a chook pen which often attracts rodents of some description. Our dogs usually take care of any who wanderinto our yard, but this little fella has survived so far. The new pup is actually more interested in trying to swim with the fish in our pond !!
Antechinus are more elongated with quite a pointy snout. Beautiful little things, but a pain if they have one of their mating sessions in your weekender… droppings absolutely everywhere.
