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When we emerged from the shelter of the fern gully, Danny led us over to a big sandy lump on the ground. “Have you heard of jack jumpers?” he asked. “They're very aggressive ants. Very common in Tasmania.”

When a jack jumper nest is disturbed, the ants race up from the ground and jump about in an attack frenzy. In their rage to defend their nest, they can leap as far as four inches, eight times their body length. To demonstrate, Danny poked a stick into the ant nest and then kicked it several times. The result was volcanic. Ants with bright orange jaws came hurtling out like chunks of hot lava.

We weren't sure what a respectful distance was. “They hurt, but they're not poisonous, right?”

“Oh, yes, if you're allergic,” Alison informed us. “The allergic reaction is almost cumulative.”

“They've got big nippers on the front end,” said Jim, “and everybody thinks they're getting bitten, but they're actually holding on with those nippers, and doing the actual damage with the other end, stinging like a bee. It's quite an ancient group of ants. Most of the ancient ants sting. The modern ants bite.” Over the last twenty years, at least three Tasmanians had died of anaphylaxis after being stung by jack jumpers.

After our walk while cooling off in the shade of a wooden gazebo, we started to question the field naturalists about thylacines. Had anyone ever seen one? Alison mentioned that her father had spotted a tiger when he was a schoolboy in the 1920s near a golf course in Tasmania's Northwest. “But that was a long time ago,” she said, “before they died out.”

Then Danny—hassler of ants and leading club prankster—took us aside. “I want to tell you a story,” he said. He didn't seem keen on anyone overhearing. About eight years before, he said, he had gone for a hike near Golconda, north of Mount Arthur … “It was dawn and we were coming along a track that had been put in by a bulldozer, and we went down to a clearing. I saw a Bennett's wallaby running through the bush and it looked pretty frightened. Then I saw this other animal come past and it stood there and yawned. It was front-on and quite large, dog-sized with a big jaw and a woolly front. When it walked off, it didn't move like a dog. It was much more …athletic. Because of the time of the day and the shadows, I didn't get to see the stripes. But it had an arrogant look in its eye, like it was telling me, ‘I'm king of the castle.’ Slim chance it was a dog. I was a bit freaked out. The hackles went up on my neck.”

In Australia and Tasmania, “taking the piss” is a national pastime. It means “taking the piss out of someone,” knocking them down a peg, joking, making fun of people. After the sugar bush incident, we were feeling particularly leery.

Danny seemed distressed when we asked if he was kidding. “This is not a joke. I don't tease about biology.” Besides, he added, why would he? “People who report seeing tigers—people think they're crazy.”

He said he hadn't had a camera with him, but he did return later to see if he could find any evidence. “I found a scat, but I never got it tested. There were no tracks. The area was quite hard. I've gone back since then, but haven't seen one. The problem is that houses have been going up in that area. So I reckon that thylacines wouldn't be there anymore.”

“How sure would you say you were that what you saw was a thylacine?”

“Ninety, ninety-five percent. I'd want to see it one more time to be sure. I do think thylacines are out there, small populations of them.”

We told him we had spent a night listening for the thylacine in the Milkshakes—but hadn't seen or heard anything, except for some mysterious flashing lights.

“Ahhhh …min min lights,” he said.

“What are those?”

“They're like spirit lights. The aboriginal people won't even talk about them.”

As he reached the end of his explanation, we realized the skies were getting darker. There had been a shift in the wind and the smoke from the wildfires was blowing in our direction.

“Maybe the fires are headed our way,” Jim said. The botanizing