Tasmanian Devil (12 page)

[I]f anyone desires to see a blacker, uglier, more savage, and more untameable beast than our ‘Devil', he must be difficult to please—that's my opinion. I suppose those who bestowed such a name on him had pretty good reasons for it, and knew that they only gave the devil his due . . . I've heard people say in joke, of others who had very wide mouths, that, when they gaped, their heads were off; but it seems true of this animal, his jaws open to such an extent, and a murderous set of fangs they show when they do open!

    The head, which is flat, broad, very ugly, and with little skull-room for brains, takes up one-third the whole length of the beast, which is usually from a foot and a-half to two feet, some being larger. The tail sticks stiffly out, as if made of wood, the feet are something like a dog's, only more sprawly, and with very big claws. It is an awkward beast, and cannot go much of a pace at the fastest. On fairish ground, a man can easily run one down.

    One day I was out with Papa in the back-run, and we found a devil. I started full tilt after him, and came two or three good croppers amongst the rocks to begin with, but I held on, till all of a sudden he stopped short—I couldn't, so I jumped right over him. He gave a vicious snap at my legs with his big jaws, but, luckily for me, he was a second too late. I turned and knocked him over, and papa came up and finished him— finished killing him, I mean. We don't show the brutes any mercy; they do too much mischief. The young lambs stand no chance at all with them. So we hunt them down, or set traps, or dig pitfalls—any and every way we can destroy them we do. Why, one winter, some years ago, one of Papa's shepherds caught nearly one hundred and fifty! They seem to go about in families or parties; for when you catch one, you are tolerably certain of getting six or seven more, one after another, and then perhaps you will not hear of any for a good while. Of course they are much scarcer than formerly, and a very lucky thing, too.

    I don't think I mentioned the fur—but it is not fur, it's longish, very coarse, black hair, almost like horse-hair; and then as to fleas,
they swarm!
One of the men brought a dead one to the house one day for Mamma, and it was laid in the garden. Mamma and Lina were soon down on their knees beside it, peeping at its eyes and teeth and ears and all the rest of it; when Lina said, ‘Oh, look; how very curious! There are small, brown scales, like a coat of mail, all over it, under the hair'. Mamma looked where Lina had parted the long hair, and
didn't
she jump! Lina's coat of mail was just a coat of fleas. The
post-mortem
examination was cut very short, I assure you, the ‘subject' summarily disposed of, and two or three buckets of water poured on the place where it had lain. A pleasant kind of thing for a pet!

    There are two sorts of devils—one is all black, the other has a white tail-tip and a white mark like a cross down the throat and between the fore-legs; but one is just as hideous as the other. I believe you cannot tame them, and I am very sure I shall never try. People who have made the attempt say they are as stupid as they are ferocious, and never seem to know one person more than another, but growl and bite at all alike.
³

For all her apparently direct association with devils, many of her descriptions are clearly inaccurate, and it's of interest that the drawing of the animal accompanying Meredith's text is a freehand copy of Gould's original, unattributed and minus the background devils. She—or another—likewise copied the famous Gould lithograph of a thylacine pair, an animal admittedly much harder to locate, let alone sketch.

Louisa Anne Meredith died in 1895. In that year, wealthy Hobart socialite Mary Roberts opened a private zoo at Beaumaris House, close to the town. The contrast between the women is stark. Not only did Mary Roberts like devils, she bred them, and in doing so helped shift its image from diabolical and satanic to merely animal. Roberts achieved international fame for her devotion to animal causes, through activities such as her founding of the Anti-Plumage League. But she also had a highly developed business sense, importing wildlife from all over the world, while exporting whatever Tasmanian fauna she could.

Not unlike George Harris almost a century earlier, in 1915 Mary Roberts wrote about the devil for an academic British audience, this time for the London Zoological Society. It's an important and accurate document, given the lack of written information about the devil then and universal ignorance of it. The article is titled ‘The Keeping and Breeding of Tasmanian Devils':

Bipedal young devil and wolverine—the similarities in these unrelated mammals are
striking
.
(Wolverine: Daniel J. Cox, Natural Exposures Inc. Tasmanian devil:
The Mercury
)

Opposite page:
A young adult devil. This backlit photograph was taken in the wild.

(Christo Baars) This page:
A pair of adults establish the feeding hierarchy at a food site.
(Christo Baars)
Feeding devils assess the approach of a newcomer.
(Nick Mooney)

King's Run. On the isolated coast of north-west Tasmania, this small shack—Geoff King's ‘devil restaurant'—has played host to devil
watchers from all over the world. Devils are attracted to a staked out, spotlit wallaby carcass.
(Tim Dub)

King's Run. On the isolated coast of north-west Tasmania, this small shack—Geoff King's ‘devil restaurant'—has played host to devil
watchers from all over the world. Devils are attracted to a staked out, spotlit wallaby carcass.
(Tim Dub)