Carnivorous Nights_ On the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger - Margaret Mittelbach [47]
“Those are Bennett's wallabies,” Geoff said. “What we fed to the devils tonight.” The biggest wallabies stood over four feet tall and had two-and-a-half-foot-long tails that stretched out on the ground behind them. Their triangular faces were marked by tiny white mustaches, and their long ears twisted and turned so they could listen for predators in two directions at once.
It was startling to see wild animals in a landscape that had been desolate just a few hours before. It was, as they say, hopping.
“Where do they go during the day? Into the woods?”
“Yeah, just into the verge.”
As we slowly jounced over the undulating track, a wallaby or pademelon would occasionally boing across our path. In the silvery moonlight, we picked out the forms of dozens of grazing, nibbling, hopping animals.
Pademelons and Bennett's wallabies were just two of the forty-five species of macropods that live in Australia. Macropod means “big foot.” These animals have huge hind feet, as well as powerful hind legs and long thick tails. Following this basic kangaroo body model, Australia's macropods had evolved to live in every landscape and habitat, including deserts, swamps, rain forests, and rocky terrain. There are even two that live in trees.
Just a few feet away, we saw a tiny creature on its hind legs, hopping next to a dark outcrop of rocks. It looked like a furry overgrown mouse.
“Is that another species?” we asked.
“Nahhh, that's a joey—probably just out of the pouch.”
It was a young pademelon—about eight inches high and apparently about thirty weeks old. It hopped tentatively on tiny macrofeet, staying within one or two hops of its mother's pouch. Then it hopped back in and poked its tiny head out. It would spend about four months in this half-in/half-out stage before heading off on its own.
At one time, Geoff said, Tasmanian pademelons had also lived on Aus-tralia's mainland. But a combination of factors—clearing of their forest homes, persecution by British settlers, and predation by foxes—proved too much for them. By the early 1900s, this small kangaroo species had vanished from the mainland. Now it survived only in Tasmania.
Our observations on the marsupial lawn were cut short when Alexis burped loudly. It was one of those drawn-out, deep-from-the-belly belches that, while gross, is worthy of respect. Dorothy gave him a look of dismay. He shrugged. “I'm imitating the distress call of the over-the-hill devil,” he retorted.
When we reached the edge of Geoff's property, Chris retrieved his car, and we hit the gravel road that led back to the highway and Geoff 's house. Within a minute, we saw a dead wallaby on the roadside. Geoff stopped the Pajero, picked up the wallaby, and threw it into the brush.
For devils, Geoff explained, this road was a tempting smorgasbord—a little taste of possum, a little pademelon, even a little devil. Devils aren't ashamed to eat their own brethren and often get run over while intent on a little roadside cannibalism. To protect the neighborhood devils from speeding cars, Geoff did a nightly roadkill run, tossing most of the dead animals to the side and taking some back for freezing.
“About twenty Tasmanian devils are killed on this road every year and I expect when it gets the tar or bitumen on it, it'll get worse,” he said. The gravel road was in the process of being paved.
“The main thing you can do is get people to slow down at night. If you drive down here at sixty kilometers an hour, you won't hit anything. In the 230 times I've done devil viewings, I've had maybe four animals hit me. At sixty kilometers an hour, you get down here in fourteen minutes. At a hundred kilometers an hour, you get down here in eleven minutes, and you would probably kill an animal a night.”
He stopped again to pick up a brushtail possum.
“It's quite fresh,” Alexis pointed out.
“Yes, it's been killed in the last couple of hours.