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The area we had chosen for our tiger vigil was the Milkshakes Hills, a 690-acre forest reserve on a vast swath of land managed by Tasmania's forest service. It was on the south side of the Arthur, about eight miles upstream from where James had heard the tiger's call. The nearest town was Trowutta, the place where James grew up, ten miles north via the road. South of the Milkshakes, there were no roads at all. The nearest town was twenty-five miles away at Savage River.

As we drove south from the coast toward the Milkshakes, much of the road was unsealed. The day was hot and clear. The only clouds around were the dust storms kicked up by our speeding cars. Since we were following Chris, any scenery—dry pastureland, rain forest, and logging trucks—was obscured by a dirty brown scrim.

We stopped only once, pulling onto the gravel just past a wooden sign that read “Kanunnah Bridge—Arthur River.” Kanunnah was one of the aboriginal names for the tiger. Below the bridge, the Arthur was surrounded by green temperate rain forest. Trees blanketed a sandbar in the middle of the river. A flock of white cockatoos flew over the treetops. Gazing at the dense forest, we began to appreciate the possibilities for concealment. It looked primordial enough to harbor an assortment of dinosaurs, not to mention a widely scattered population of dog-sized nocturnal predators. Maybe James hadn't just been hearing things.

When we arrived at the campsite, we pitched our tents under a pair of giant tree ferns, using some of the shed fronds to pad the ground. The facilities included a barbecue, a decent supply of wood, and a water tap marked “Not for Drinking.” In the outhouse—which Australians called a dunny—there was a logbook in which visitors could write their thoughts about their visit. Most of the entries were pretty bland: “Beautiful drive!” or “Thanks for the dunny.” But as we read further, we realized the little notebook was rife with references to snakes. “Another snake in the dunny,” someone had written, accompanied by a squiggly drawing of a tiger snake. Since we had yet to see a tiger snake, we spent a fair amount of time holding our noses and peering down the hole of the pit toilet with our flashlights.

Much to our disappointment, the search of the outhouse came up empty. When we returned to camp, we saw Alexis crouched down next to his tent. We assumed he was doing some sort of butt-firming exercise, but then noticed that standing just a few feet away was a gray-furred pademelon—a very scraggly-looking one. We had seen dozens of these two-foot-tall wild kangaroos while spotlighting at Geoff's, but this was the first live pademelon we had seen in the daytime. They were supposed to be nocturnal.

Alexis was extending his arm to offer the pademelon a bit of bread and instructing Dorothy about the best method of photographing them in a moment of interspecies communion. “Wait a sec,” he was saying. “Let's try to get …the money shot.”

“That pademelon looks like it has mange.”

Alexis ignored us. “Come on, Mangy, pose with Daddy,” he cooed.

We had heard about macropods like this one. Hanging around campsites and getting sick on junk food. “You know, feeding processed food to kangaroos can give them a disease called lumpy jaw,” we said.

Alexis didn't respond.

“It's an infection of the mouth. It's fatal.”

Alexis withdrew the bread. “Sorry,” he said to the pademelon.

With the offer of a snack rescinded, Mangy loped on all fours over to where Chris was cutting up strips of meat for the grill. Chris shooed him away, and Mangy sniffed hopefully at a locked garbage receptacle before retreating to the perimeter of the campsite. There he sat by the trunk of a eucalyptus tree, looking at us with brown, dewdrop eyes.

We cracked open one of our books, Tasmanian Wild Life, written in 1962 by the Tasmanian naturalist Michael Sharland. And we looked up his description of the pademelon:

Indeed, in neither its broad outline nor in its countenance is there anything distinctive or very pleasing. Its fur never seems to be well