Carnivorous Nights_ On the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger - Margaret Mittelbach [133]
We didn't question whether adding human blood to the pigment was really necessary. In fact, we had read that ancient aboriginal artists had used blood as a binder for making their rock art pigments. And we had read that Michael Howe, a Van Diemen's Land convict-turned-bush-ranger who headed up a band of outlaws that raided farms and rustled sheep from 1814 to 1818, had been so desperate to record his nightmares that he made parchment out of kangaroo skin and wrote his dreams down in blood. That was keeping it real. We began searching the room and found a set of needles in our first-aid kit.
“How about this?” We showed him a big needle and then sterilized it with his mini-blowtorch.
Alexis jabbed his index finger with the tip of the needle. “Ow! This is duller than a two-by-four.”
“We'll do it. Just turn your head away.”
“No! Please, I need my hands. Haven't we got anything sharper?”
We pulled out a thinner, sharper needle from the first-aid kit.
“Why didn't you use that one in the first place?” he complained.
“Hold it, we've got to sterilize this—and your hand, too.” We flamed the needle with the blowtorch and wiped his fingers with an alcohol swab.
Alexis took the needle and slowly pierced the tip of his finger about a quarter-inch deep. “Fuck,” he muttered.
He turned his hand upside down over the container that held the mashed-up leech and began milking his injured finger like a cow's udder. Nothing came out.
“Am I dead? Where's all my blood?”
“Maybe you're a vampire.”
“All right …let me do this again.” He shoved the needle into his fingertip and emitted a kamikaze scream. A drop of bright red liquid emerged and he quickly squeezed it into the paint cup. Altogether he squeezed out three or four small drops.
“That's going to have to be enough,” he said. He stirred the mixture, creating a brownish paste, and then added a splash of acrylic medium from a small bottle. “If I need more, I'll just add some instant coffee.”
Then he took out brushes and paper and swirled the invertebrate slime, blood, and coffee into a twisting, gaping-mouthed leech—about one hundred times its actual size.
27. SENATOR THYLACINE
The next morning, we were still a bit groggy from the one-two punch of climbing Mount Wellington and bloodletting Alexis. And we were late for an appointment, one that had been difficult to arrange. We struggled to find something decent to wear in our packs, and managed to dig out a few unrumpled clothes. To our chagrin, we discovered we only had hiking boots with us—not that the lack of formal wear should have come as any surprise. We smoothed down our hair as best we could, then raced down to Hobart's waterfront and a cluster of small office buildings.
Of all the tiger hunters in Tasmania, only one had gone on to become a high government official. Bob Brown, James Malley's partner in crime from the Thylacine Expedition Research Team of 1972, was now serving his second term in the Australian Senate. We had arranged with the sena-tor's press aide to interview him at his office on Franklin Wharf. And as we dashed down Hobart's steep streets, we wondered if, after all these years, he would still be interested in talking about the tiger.
Half a block from the senator's office, Alexis stopped short.
“What is it?” we asked.
He pulled his pot pipe from his pocket. It was fully loaded for his next hit. “I should leave this someplace,” he said, looking around on the street.
We started to get nervous. There would probably be a security check outside the senator's office—a metal detector at the very least. But where could Alexis hide his stash? We were on a public street. Suddenly, Alexis— who had been scanning the surroundings—executed a startling layup. He loped toward a small street tree, jumped in the air, and deposited the pipe in a crook between two branches with a graceful finger roll. “Let's hope the magpies don't snatch it,” he said as he