Carnivorous Nights_ On the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger - Margaret Mittelbach [38]
The problem of what should and should not be done is perplexing. Before rational decisions can be made, we must decide on certain basic facts about the animal. We know very little of its ecology. When the thylacine was common, all efforts were to kill or capture, not study it, a common attitude to predators in those days. We have little fact, much hearsay, and some folklore. Unfortunately, most of the bushmen who had frequent first hand contact with the thylacine are now dead.…
Whether a “wait and see” policy or a more active long term searching policy aimed at active management should be adopted is under careful consideration. A contingency plan is being prepared in the event that elusive extant thylacines are finally found. Hopefully this will occur in secure areas involving sufficient numbers to allow study and a population recovery in the near future.
The Naarding sighting had stirred up a near frenzy of hope that the Tasmanian tiger somehow—against all odds—had survived. But every year since, that hope had dimmed another watt. When we talked to Nick on the phone, he was far less optimistic than he was in 1984. Still, Tasma-nia's Parks and Wildlife Service continues to record and occasionally investigate tiger sightings.
As Geoff finished his story, we began to look around. The Naarding site was nothing like the lush, misty forest we had seen in the beer ad. It was nearly 90 degrees Fahrenheit outside, and the intersection of the barren roadways looked like a dusty truck stop. We wondered how many tiger seekers had visited this spot before us and started to feel slightly selfconscious.
Dorothy and Chris stood around in the baking sun. We imagined they were wishing for margaritas and beach towels (though they were too polite to say anything). We began taking copious notes, making sketches of the site, snapping photographs, rubbing our chins and speculating, and pacing around in the dust.
In the heat and white light of the day, there wasn't an animal in sight. Not a bird. Not a skink. Not even a tiger snake. The scrawny trees around us looked drained of life.
Alexis took a bottle of water, and poured a thin line of liquid into the white floury dust of the road, just where Naarding had parked. We looked over his shoulder. He had drawn a Tasmanian tiger—and we watched its watery stripes evaporate in the flaming summer heat.
“Now you see it, now you don't,” he said.
We walked over to the spot where Naarding said his tiger had disappeared into the forest. The vaguest suggestion of a trail dipped down from the road and was flanked by two large tree stumps that looked like jagged, rotting teeth. Behind the stumps was a tangle of bracken fern, leading down into a patch of young eucalyptus forest.
We leaned against one of the big stumps and wondered what Naarding had really seen, if anything. We considered the possibility that Naarding had been right. It was easy to imagine a tiger emerging from this scraggly forest into the crossroads and being blinded by a beam of light. He might well have turned tail, flashed his balls, and said, “Later, pal.” But then what happened to him? Did he breed? Did he die alone in the bush? The white roads leading off in three directions suggested the possible fates of the tiger: extinct, surviving, or wavering in between the two. We thought about the “in between” road. Maybe Naarding hadn't seen a flesh-and-blood tiger. Maybe he had seen a ghost, an apparition of Tasmania past. Being the victim of species-cide might incite the tiger to come back from the dead and haunt the island. The Northwest seemed like a promising breeding ground for ghost stories.
Alexis interrupted our ruminations. “I don't think you want to put your hand there,” he said. We turned around and saw a phalanx of large black ants boiling up from the stump we had been leaning against. Their legs and backsides