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“He's a buck, a sexually mature male, about fourteen or fifteen years old. Watch out for the claws. He'd break your finger.”

Biggie had incredible body armor. His hard, crusty shell was dark bronze and reinforced with various serrations and barbs. His claws were surrounded by spikes. Still glistening from the water, he angrily waved his five pairs of brawny legs. He looked like he was hopped up on steroids.

“It's a pretty well-defended animal,” Todd said, quickly measuring him. “Not too much can get at it.”

From the tip of his claws to the tip of his fanlike tail, Biggie was thirteen inches long. Todd placed him on the ground, so we could get a better look.

Biggie's eyes were like black beads, sitting atop quarter-inch-long stalks. His eyes had a distinctly intelligent look about them. For a hulking crustacean, they were profoundly expressive—and what they were expressing was outrage.

Clearly Biggie had never experienced such effrontery in his life. If the tiger was once the king of Tasmania's terrestrial realm, the lobster was the king of the rivers—at least this river—and he was going to assert his dominance.

He leaned his antennae back and reared up, his claws poised to strike. Alexis stuck his nose down to get a closer look and Biggie clapped his claws together.

We held a pencil right next to Biggie as a measure of comparative size and got ready to take a picture. But then he grabbed the pencil in his right claw and waved it as if to say, “How'd you like me to write a book about you?????” Three American fuckwits travel to Tasmania on an illdefined journey in search of a long-lost tiger and are eaten by a rare and amazing lobster, God's gift to crayfishdom.

“Hopefully,” said Todd, “this is the animal that saves our river system.”

“He's kind of sexy,” Alexis pointed out.

Todd looked thoughtful. “They have been called sexy before,” he said, studying Biggie's claw. “That's a hell of a nipple clamp.”

11. SUICIDE HEN

When we got back on the Bass Highway, Alexis tried to call Dorothy and Chris. They had arranged for us to stay at the Sunset Holiday Villas in Arthur River, a few miles south of Geoff 's property. When he reached the proprietor, she told him that Chris and Dorothy had gone out to dinner. Alexis was worried about not getting back on time, but we figured we had better eat, too. This was not a part of the world where stores and restaurants stayed open late. Since the Bass Highway offered nothing to eat but pasture, we veered off toward the town of Stanley.

Stanley is situated at the end of a four-mile-long finger of peninsula that juts into the Bass Strait. A huge, steep-walled rock called the Nut hovers over the town. From a distance, the Nut seemed to rise like a biscuit and looked like a big, fat Pillsbury Grand. About 12.5 million years ago, the five-hundred-foot-high Nut started out as a lake of boiling hot lava inside a volcano. At some point the lava lake cooled down, solidifying into greenish basaltic rock. Ultimately, the softer rock of the volcano's cone eroded away, leaving this squat cylindrical landmark.

As we sped up the peninsula toward the Nut, twilight began to descend. The narrow roadway unfurled like a black ribbon in front of us. We wanted to get there before the little town shut down.

Suddenly in the dimming light about fifty feet ahead, we saw three native hens standing on skinny legs beside the blacktop. All three started to cross, but then two of the hens saw the Pajero coming and skittered to a stop. The third native hen put on a fabled burst of speed, dashing across the road like a sprinter. It made it! But then it looked back. When it saw the other birds hadn't followed, it started back and dived right in front of us.

“Suicide hen!” Alexis shouted, as we slammed on the brakes.

We heard a thunk and looked out the back window to see its lifeless body rolling away. When it came to a stop, one of its little wings was pointing upward, the feathers ruffling slightly in the breeze.