Carnivorous Nights_ On the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger - Margaret Mittelbach [13]
“Do you think it's a thylacine?” we asked.
“Maybe,” Alexis said. “But it could be a rabbit for all I know.” Then he looked admiringly at the work of these long-vanished artists. “I know one thing. I hope my shit's still around in four thousand years.”
By the time we got back to the boat, it was nearly beached. With some difficulty, Les extricated the pudding from Tiger Shark Hole and anchored in the main part of the Southwest Arm. In the distance, we saw the tiny figures of water-skiers, swimmers, and numerous pleasure craft. Alexis and Dorothy decided to go for a dip and leapt into the green water. We advised them to watch out for tiger sharks, but they paid no attention.
Les pulled out a cold can of Victoria Bitter and popped the top. “Nothing I like better than a day on the water, good conversation, and a good beer,” he said. Then he began telling us about his day job. It turned out studying rock art was a sideline for him these days. He worked with the New South Wales Department of Corrective Services, counseling prisoners and parolees with drug, alcohol, mental health, and violence problems. Some of his work was profoundly gratifying, helping people get straight, putting their lives back together. But in the criminal justice system, he also encountered some hard nuts—murderers, serial killers.
“Working in the jails, we have a saying: Yes, I'm paranoid. But am I paranoid enough?” Alexis and Dorothy climbed out of the water and retreated to their sunny perch on the roof.
Drug addiction, Les continued, really exacerbated the problems of felons. Surprisingly, he said the most problematic drug he had to deal with was marijuana. It caused tremendous social problems. “In my experience it's worse than heroin,” he said. “It affects brain function.”
“Really?” we said.
We excused ourselves and went onto the roof of the boat. Dorothy, in a gingham bikini and with her Gucci sunglasses propped on her head, was giving Alexis a shoulder rub. He took his pot pipe out. Clearly, he had been eavesdropping. “Tell Les I'm killing my last brain cell,” he said, flicking his lighter.
3. THE ONCE AND FUTURE TIGER
A few nights after our visit to the ancient portrait gallery, we sat on benches in Sydney's Hyde Park beneath the thick, tropical leaves of Moreton Bay figs. Flying foxes were jostling for position in the trees. Once in a while, one of them would take off, its four-foot-long, leathery wings silhouetted against the city's skyscrapers. It was odd. Animals the size of cats were flying through the evening air and the city's residents barely seemed to notice.
Across the street at the venerable Australian Museum, something else strange was going on. Cloning scientists were trying to bring the Tasmanian tiger back from the dead. We had made an appointment with the cloning team and been casing the museum for days beforehand, visiting exhibits on ancient Australian megafauna, purchasing tiger souvenirs in the gift shop (most notably a bronze tiger tiepin)—and hanging out in the park with the megabats.
The cloning project had received an enormous amount of press in Australia. Our favorite headline had been, “Get a Life, Scientists Tell Extinct Tiger.” Most of the articles were accompanied by a photo of a specimen from the museum's collection: a perfectly preserved thylacine pup, eyes closed and floating in a jar of alcohol.
Sitting in the park, we reflected on the similarities between the flying foxes and the thylacine. Just as the thylacine had been in the nineteenth century, flying foxes were regarded as pests and, despite their abundance in Sydney, were actually rare. In many areas of Australia the bats' forest homes had been chopped down, and they had turned to eating fruit crops. As a result, farmers started killing the creatures,