Carnivorous Nights_ On the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger - Margaret Mittelbach [45]
Even without its head, the wallaby must have weighed at least twenty pounds. “She couldn't eat the whole thing, could she?”
“She could eat the bulk of the back end of that wallaby and she would be a very big, round girl. She'd be really bloated.”
We asked Geoff if he had a name for the male devil that Shacky had vanquished.
“Oh no, I don't give them names. She's the Shack Mother because she denned under the shack. But I find it hard to give them names because I might find them dead on the road the next day.”
He looked at Shacky with affection. “It's a bit sad. Most devils only live to age five or so. I estimate she's about four now—but she's had a pretty easy life around here, so she might live a bit longer. In wildlife parks, they can live till they're eight.”
Shacky had abandoned the tail and gone back to work on the hole she'd been excavating in the wallaby's hindquarters. Then her entire head disappeared inside. For a moment, she looked like she was wearing a big, furry, bloody hat.
“She's really Down Under,” said Alexis. “She's going in through the anus and coming out the belly button. Do you think if the carcass were big enough, she would just climb right in it?”
“Sometimes people will see a cow they thought was dead—and it moves,” said Geoff. “It's because a devil eating the carcass has worked its way inside.”
“Ghost cow …”
“Zombie cow …”
“Elsie gets it the wrong way …” said Alexis. “You know what we're going to need to do, Geoff ? I'm going to have to put an intestine in a bag and make pigment from it. Can we arrange that?”
Geoff 's eyes opened wide. “Fantastic,” he said.
Shacky was still gorging when a new devil appeared on the scene. He was coal black except for a single white marking circling the top of his foreleg. He stood at the top of the hill like a general preparing for battle and studied the scene. Shacky clearly knew he was there. The General's head was massive. (As they get older, the males' heads become proportionally bigger, and the head and shoulders can be as much as 25 percent of a male devil's body weight.) By comparison Shacky looked petite. We heard the far-off peep of a bird—a lapwing or plover—and out of nowhere a third devil raced across the field of combat, screeching and heading straight for Shacky. She merely looked at this would-be interloper and hissed—causing the intruder to zigzag into a complete retreat. On top of the hill, the General continued to stand his ground and sniff the air. Just as Shacky was preparing to take another bite, he charged down the hill, screaming what sounded like the battle cry of hell.
“Lovely, lovely,” Geoff whispered as they engaged in their whirling devil-match. “He's in wonderful condition.” EERRERGEEE. AHGH. RARRGH. Either Shacky had finally eaten her fill or the big male was too much for her. With a final roundhouse booty-bash, he forced her from the carcass. Shacky skulked away into the night.
The screams from this last battle had unnerved us. But Geoff told us we didn't know the half of it.
One night when Geoff was a young boy, neighbors on the farm twenty miles down the road had been out shooting wallabies. They were culling them to prevent them from grazing on stockland. There was a shooting accident, and a neighbor boy was killed. While the family made arrangements in town, Geoff was asked to look after their deserted farm. The dead wallabies—about thirty or forty of them—had been left in a pile a few hundred feet from the farmhouse. In the night, the devils came for them. “I'll never forget lying in bed, listening to the cacophony—the devils, I don't know how many there were, screaming and yowling. It was the most bone-chilling thing I'd ever heard.”
By the time the General got to work on the carcass, the wallaby's bones were sticking up through the flesh. Muscle and sinew dribbled out of his mouth.