Carnivorous Nights_ On the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger - Margaret Mittelbach [89]
“So,” we began rather tentatively, “have either of you ever had a cat for a pet?”
“Heaps of 'em!” John said enthusiastically. “They're fantastic—if they're able to stay home and be looked after. Unfortunately, in the wrong habitat, they can do a lot of damage. The cat is such a great hunter—it's got that instinct to stalk and hunt. They're great survivors. That's why they cause so much trouble in the environment.”
Ken started up the pickup again, and we began cruising slowly around the perimeter of the tip. We were stalking the cat. “Here puss, puss, puss,” Ken murmured. An orange blur streaked through the brush and vanished behind a log. Ken stopped and set up the rifle again. It was another tense moment. We were still struggling with our inner cat ladies. Ken began to make kissing noises, “psssssss, pssssst, pssssssst,” to lure the cat out into the open. “Sometimes it works,” he said. His eye was glued to the sight as John swept the trees with the spot. We waited about five minutes, but Moggie stayed hidden.
“Is Moggie typical of the size of the cats you shoot?” we asked. “He seemed kind of small for a feral cat.”
“They're normally about two or three kilos. The biggest cat we shot was nine and a half kilos.” Twenty-one pounds. “For a cat, that's a fair lump—and all muscle.”
Alexis, who had not said a word since Ken first drew a bead on Moggie, finally perked up. “That's no flabby tabby,” he said.
We asked Alexis who he was rooting for, the shooters or Moggie.
“What can I say?” he said. “I don't think I could have handled it if they blew that cat away.”
When it came to feline eradication, Alexis could talk the talk but he couldn't walk the walk.
We returned to the prime target, scanning fields and paddocks for signs of foxy activity.
“What are our chances of actually seeing a fox?”
“Tonight?” Ken said, scanning the paddocks. “Less than one percent … Personally I've seen four that could have been a fox. But they just wouldn't give us a chance to shoot them. So we can't confirm that.”
Ken, John, and all the members of the task force were anxious for such confirmation, to bring in the body of a dead fox. Despite the evidence that at least one fox had dined on Tasmanian animals, the public and some government officials were growing impatient.
The situation was frustrating. Between the two of them, Ken and John had shot thousands of foxes on the mainland. They had the skills— tracking, luring, hunting, shooting. But the incipient population of foxes in Tasmania was proving elusive.
“We're going to be incredibly lucky if we actually get one,” John said. “It is really the needle in the haystack. At least on the mainland, foxes have territories—there's pressure. You know where their dens are. But here, the world's their own. They're gypsies. They've got no territories. It's a free and easy life with plenty of tucker.”
John shone his spotlight on two furry brushtail possums—one big and one small—shimmying up a small tree with feathery leaves and wispy, drooping branches. The smaller possum looked a little nervous. “It's a mother with a joey,” said Ken. In the spotlight, their eyes gave off a dull Mars-like glow. “When the young ones leave the pouch, they usually ride on their mother's back for a few weeks.”
“That's a wattle tree they're in,” John said. “They used to tan the skins of wallaby and possum with wattle bark.” At one time, Tasmania had a large trade in possum skins. Tasmanian brushtails have thicker, darker fur than their mainland counterparts, and their pelts were highly prized. As late as the 1970s, as many as 200,000 possum pelts a year were exported.
Tasmania's native possums were doing