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A look of bedazzlement lit up Geoff's face. “Fantastic,” he said. It was the devil in the flesh. And it was meeting us on our own turf—daylight or what was left of it. “You don't see this often.”

Though we had seen devils just two nights before, there was something different about this encounter. We hadn't lured this one with dead wallaby treats. This devil was just walking through, sharing the landscape with us, a rare intersection between two worlds.

The devil stopped and raised its head to sniff, almost lifting itself into the air. Every part of its body was in that sniff. The fading light shone dully on its sleek, glossy fur as it determined its next move.

Whatever scent was in the air—shifty humans or the irresistible odor of carrion—the devil determined to change course and headed off at an oblique angle. It trotted away with a herky-jerky lope—like the rocking gait of an Indonesian shadow puppet—and exited into the tea trees.

Seeing this ambassador from the nocturnal realm was auspicious and slightly transcendent. It even took Geoff a while to shake off his amazement. Wild devils don't make a habit of coming out in the light—and certainly not in the vicinity of people. But he came up with an explanation that was simple enough. It was a young devil out pushing the envelope, taking risks an older devil might not.

We were struck by our good luck. If we were visited by the elusive devil, could a tiger be next? “Do you think it means anything?” we asked Alexis.

“Yeah,” he said, lighting his mini-blowtorch. “It's Miller time.” Intoxicating smoke wafted into the Tasmanian twilight.

Geoff stopped to show us a tall green grass called a cutting rush. It looked like the cutting grass we had seen with Todd. “It's a species of Gahnia,” Geoff said. “The white pith is edible.” Careful not to cut himself on the sharp edges of the blades, he cut from the bottom of a few flat stalks and peeled back the green sheaths. The white inside tasted like a buttery potato.

“Delicious,” Chris pronounced.

“It's good bush tucker,” Geoff agreed.

Alexis wandered off down one of the crisscrossing wallaby tracks. When we caught up with him, he was staring intently at a small cluster of yellow flowers. “These dandelions are freaking me out,” he said. “Are they freaking you out?”

“Um—”

Just then, a sleek black animal streaked through the grass ahead of us. It moved about three times as fast as the devil.

“What is that?” shrieked Alexis. “A devil on crack?”

“That was a feral cat,” said Geoff.

“It looked like a fucking tiger.”

The way the cat was bounding through the grass, fully extending its muscle-bound body, it looked like a miniature black panther. It must have been chasing its dinner and was miles from any human abode. Geoff listed some of the creatures that would make easy prey for a house cat gone bush. Skinks, antechinus, swamp rats, and ground-nesting birds like superb fairy wrens. On small islands, the introduction of feral cats has caused animals—from parakeets to wallabies—to be extirpated.

We continued to walk, and Alexis asked us to hang back behind the group. His eyes had grown bloodshot and his pupils were cavernous.

“You know that Vroom has a lot of cash?” he said. His tone had become conspiratorial. “I have the perfect project for him. I'm going to ask him to fund a feral cat eradication program for Tasmania.”

We considered the resulting headlines. “Yank Millionaire Wants Your Cats Dead.” “Kitten Killer to Pussums: I Want Your Blood.”

Then we had a flash of the future: the Vroom Museum in Smithton. At the main entrance would stand a bronze statue of Chris, with one hand raised in a fist and the other holding up a limp, lifeless cat. Hanging on the museum's walls would be hundreds of tiny mounted cat heads, with inscriptions like “Ginger, two-year-old domestic cat, killed at Johnson's Farm.”

“There could be a publicity problem,” we suggested. “The locals may not share your healthy antipathy toward feral cats—some of which are their pets.”

“It would cost just a fraction of his wealth,” Alexis argued.