Carnivorous Nights_ On the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger - Margaret Mittelbach [81]
When we returned to the camp, Chris was making breakfast and Mangy had already arrived. He seemed to have adapted himself to human sched-uling—at least mealtimes. And this time, he had brought a friend, a female pademelon with a tiny joey peeking out of her pouch. The joey's head was barely the size of a tennis ball and topped with big, perky ears. “Table for three,” Mangy seemed to be saying. “And we'll need a booster seat.”
16. 1-300-FOX-OUT
We were at a gas station on the outskirts of Launceston, Tasma-nia's second largest city. While we pumped petrol into the Pajero, we heard raucous monkeylike calls from above. Sitting atop a telephone wire was a squat, long-beaked bird. It let loose with an other set of whooping cries.
“Laughing kookaburra,” said Alexis excitedly.
This large kingfisher is one of Australia's most celebrated animals—almost as famous as the kangaroo and koala—and the subject of the beloved “Laugh Kookaburra” song (“kookaburra sits in the old gum tree/merry, merry king of the bush is he”).
Alexis retrieved his Field Guide to Tasmanian Birds and paged through it until he found the kookaburra entry. He looked perplexed. “Uh-oh, you guys. Laughing kookaburras are not native to Tasmania. They were introduced from mainland Australia.” He began to look slightly angry and gazed up at the kookaburra malevolently. “You fat, motherfucking pigeon.”
The sight of Alexis shaking his fist at a bird made us slightly nervous. Dorothy was gone. She was on her journey back to Manhattan. There was no buffer to protect us from the temperamental artist. Chris, while still in Tasmania, had also abandoned us. Apparently spending the night listening for a probably long-dead animal on a deserted hillside wasn't the eco-adventure he had been hoping for. Team Thylacine was down to three.
After our night in the Milkshakes, we decided to stalk what we thought would be more likely quarry: Vulpes vulpes, the red fox, a creature that was sure to stir Alexis's blood.
The red fox is not native to Tasmania or any part of Australia. In the 1860s and 1870s, the fox was introduced to the mainland by British settlers. They imported wild foxes along with other familiar species such as the house sparrow and starling, to make Australia seem more like Mother England. But unlike house sparrows and starlings, which were brought in for what passed as aesthetic reasons, the foxes were brought in for sport. They were introduced so that the settlers could engage in an age-old tradition—the hunting of foxes with horses and hounds. In the end, the scheme worked beyond anyone's expectations. By 1930, foxes had spread across the mainland, occupying virtually every type of habitat. But there was a problem: the foxes were the ones that did most of the hunting.
In the annals of animal introductions, the fox is as bad as it gets. The Australian government classifies the fox as a threat to the survival of numerous endangered and vulnerable animals. Foxes will kill any creature smaller than themselves. They have been involved in six animal extinctions over the past 150 years, and are currently threatening the survival of ten other Australian species, including mammals, birds, even a species of tortoise.
Somehow (over nearly two centuries of European settlement), Tasmania was spared the fox. And as a result, all kinds of animals that are extinct or very rare on the Australian mainland thrive there. Tasmania has served as a Noah's ark for creatures such as Tasmanian pademelons and several smaller creatures in the macropod superfamily (potoroos, Tasmanian bettongs), as well as two “native cats” better known as the spotted-tailed quoll and the Eastern quoll. But Tasmania's fox-free status—the ark— had recently sprung a leak.
On the outskirts of Launceston, we met with Chris Parker,