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Take a very close look at the picture right and you'll see how one person's thoughtless littering in Dalmorton
State Forest, near Grafton, has become a deathtrap.
A brown antechinus (Antechinus stuartii) has somehow squeezed inside a discarded beer bottle, perhaps
for a few sips of beer or maybe chasing a tasty cockroach inside for dinner.
The brown antechinus is a common carnivorous native marsupial mouse found throughout forests in south east Australia. A little bigger
than a house mouse, it eats beetles, spiders, cockroaches and a variety of other insects.
It was discovered by keen-eyed forest officer Rob Predo who saw frantic movements
in the bottle. Laying in the full sun, the heat inside the bottle was distressing the animal
and the cause of noticeable activity.
As the antechinus is nocturnal, it probably went into the dark glass bottle at night and
would not have realised the trap it was entering. The curved slippery glass inside a
bottle is a bit more difficult to hold onto than logs and rocks.
Ecology field workers Noel Douglas and Robyn Herklots came to the animal's rescue
and were quick to identify it as an antechinus. Noel broke the neck of the bottle and
freed it, but was left wondering how it got in and whether it could have eventually made its way out.
This antechinus fate could have been tragic, and it is a reminder that such littering is not just insightly, but
dangerous to native fauna.
Ken McCray 
Ecologist, Casino
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