If you're having a bad day, watching an echidna frolicking in a bath on a scorching hot Canberra day ought to lift your spirits.
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The video was taken by a Gungahlin resident, Jan, who asked not to have her last name included, in a reserve across from her home in January, 2017.
The video has emerged after Jan submitted a still from it to a climate change photo competition now being run by the ACT Government.
(The competition is designed to draw attention to the government's climate change strategy consultation with prizes of up to $1000 on offer. It's seeking examples of climate change in Canberra as well as pictures of people undertaking activities which reduce their impact on the environment. You can enter at https://www.yoursay.act.gov.au/zero-emissions)
But back to that impossibly adorable echidna.
Jan tells us when she moved to a new area of Gungahlin four years ago, hers was the only home in the neighbourhood and very close to the bush.
"So I decided to put a shallow dish of water over the road in the reserve directly across from my house, hoping that snakes would drink there and not come over the road to visit, as a number of brown snakes had been seen in the immediate area by builders," she said.
The trick seemed to work with no snakes sighted on her property. But the water also had an even greater impact.
"The next thing I knew everything from lizards to birds and kangaroos were drinking from it, so I put a few more buckets over there," she said.
And then came that echidna joyfully cooling off in the bucket.
"I was gobsmacked," Jan said.
"That was actually the third video I'd taken of an echidna doing that. The first time I tipped the water out because I thought he was drowning but a neighbour told me they are actually very good climbers and he was just having a bath.
"He came back almost every day for the next week during the heatwave."
Jan says the echidnas are seen most often in the heat of January.
"I keep the buckets filled summer and winter and often see echidnas over there having a drink or a bath to cool off," she said.
"I am also aware that echidnas can suffer organ failure if their bodies can't cool down enough in the heat so it is very important for them to have access to water during these increasing heatwaves."
