Carnivorous Nights (28 page)

Ultimately, the rabbits were somewhat contained. Rabbit viruses were introduced in the 1950s and the rabbit population dropped precipitously. But the rabbit still has a bad reputation. Environmentalists are particularly irked by the story of the Easter Bunny. The notion of a “good” bunny out doing good deeds is anathema. So there is a movement to replace the Easter Bunny with the Easter Bilby, a similarly long-eared but native creature, which now only survives in places rabbits, foxes, and feral cats can't reach. Thousands of pounds of Easter Bilby chocolates are sold every year, and Australian environmentalists hope to one day eradicate chocolate bunnies all across their great land.

Knowing all this, we drew some satisfaction from the fact that both Ken and John were wearing Akubras—made from pure rabbit felt. The superabundance of rabbits was not lost on early Australian milliners, and rabbits are turned into one of the most iconic of all Australian clothing items.

We were scanning the ground beneath a line of wattle trees when we heard John yell from above. “Moggie!”

Ken stopped the pickup, and we felt a crackle of excitement. John was shining the spotlight into a tip, a pit filled with rubbish and farm debris, surrounded by brush. A Cyclopean figure glared back at us, its one eye glowing like a white-hot coal.

We weren't sure what a Moggie was, but it sounded sinister, and we were on the verge of asking just what we were facing when we recognized the animal pinned in John's spotlight. It was a small, striped quadruped: an orange tabby cat. It looked like it had just walked out of a pet shop.

“Moggie?”

Ken opened his door, picked up the rifle, and flipped down the stand
onto the hood of the pickup. Then he leaned down and looked through the sight, his finger on the trigger.

“It's a nickname for a cat,” he said.

Ken, we knew, had shot foxes from 1,200 feet in Victoria. We were scarcely one hundred feet from the tabby. Moggie, we figured, didn't have much of a chance. Alexis began to look a little pale, and we felt a sudden chill.

We had known cats were on the menu for the evening. But when confronted with this imminent feline assassination, a new idea struggled to the surface of our consciousness:
Were we crazy? What were we doing out hunting a kitty-cat?

We knew ridding the world of this fluffy beast was for the greater good … and yet, when it came down to it … shouldn't someone call the fire department and help Moggie get home? We had been culturally programmed to serve and protect
Felis catus.

A debate began raging in our minds: It was being held on the stage of the Kaufman Theater at the American Museum of Natural History. Speaking against the cats was Mangy. He'd cleaned himself up and was dressed in a suit. A plastic name tag pinned to his jacket read “Director, Vroom Museum.” He was standing before a blackboard, using his tail as a pointer and going over the following list. “Repeat after me,” he lectured.

Cats are spree killers.

They kill for sport.

They shit on dead wallabies.

They make mincemeat out of cute little macropods.

On the opposite side of the stage was Beatrice. She was narrating a PowerPoint presentation. It was a personal appeal.

Since the time of the ancient Egyptians, cats have been partnered with the human race …
An audience of house cats—Manx, Siamese, Persian, and Rex—murmured and nodded their heads in approval.

We braced for the blast. But Ken never got a chance to squeeze the trigger. Moggie darted off into a tangle of brush.

The rifle's stainless steel barrel glinted mutely in the moonlight. “He didn't go far,” Ken predicted. The spotlight darted through the dark-ness—as if it were chasing an escaped felon through a prison yard.

“So,” we asked nervously, “have you killed a lot of cats?”

“Yeah,” he said. “They're not very elusive.” He saw us eyeing the gun. “Have a look,” he offered.

We took turns peering through the rifle's telescopic sight. Moggie's lair leapt into the foreground. It seemed as if we could see a single blade of grass glowing in the spotlight from fifty feet away.

Ken continued. “What's happening down here is that we're getting sightings of things that aren't foxes coming in as foxes. We'll go out and spotlight and see a big ginger cat running around. We shoot that cat and the sightings stop. So, it gets rid of the background noise—the sightings that are just nonsense basically. Cats are such destructive pests as well. And it keeps us in good practice. If we see a fox, we want to be confident that, when we pick up that rifle, we're going to be able to shoot it.”

“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 quite well in the absence of a significant fur trade. “They've gone berserk,” said Ken.

In the headlights, we surprised a group of brushtail possums that had overrun a small barn. At least three of the furry creatures were scrambling on the hay-covered floor feeding on a spilled sack of calf weaner pellets. A small brushtail with a beautiful black coat was running back and forth, balancing on a rusting wagon wheel. One reddish possum was sitting in a stooped position on top of a wooden gate—its thick furry tail hanging in front of it. It didn't seem to be scared by our arrival, and with its sprightly long ears sticking up, it appeared rakish and relaxed, like a ranch hand on a break. The scene looked like a goofball postcard and would have been complete if the animals were wearing Akubras and sucking on stalks of hay.
“Greetings from the possum paddock, Tasmania,”
or
“Howdy, Possum!”

Brushtails were cute and abundant. But at an average weight of 3.3 kilograms (about seven pounds), they were also fox food. If foxes took hold, possums most likely wouldn't be eradicated, but they wouldn't be seen on the ground very often. The survivors would all be hiding in trees.

Ken drove on, and John's spotlight revealed two more animals next to a stand of wattles. They were kangaroo-like, but very small and slightly hunched over, standing about twelve inches tall on their hind legs. Their noses were elongated, more like a rat's than a kangaroo's. Ken stopped the pickup and turned off the engine. We watched them for a moment, then the dark-furred creatures hopped off into the safety of a large gorse bush. As they retreated, the spotlight illuminated white spots on the ends of their long, skinny tails.

“Potoroos,” said John from above. “They're also called tip tails.”

“That's perfect fox tucker,” said Ken.

“Foxes would just have them for lunch,” John agreed. “Feral cats would, too.” Potoroos weighed about 1.3 kilos (just under three pounds), making them ideal, easy prey.

The long-nosed potoroo was considered a secure species in Tasmania (at least it was until the foxes showed up). On the mainland, however, they were much rarer and listed as vulnerable, having disappeared from many areas due to habitat destruction as well as predation by foxes and feral cats. Tasmania was their last real refuge, and biologists agreed it would be unlikely that Tasmania's potoroos would survive a fox invasion. And, as with any extinction, their disappearance could have implications beyond their own species.

Unlike Bennett's wallabies and Tasmanian pademelons, which are grazers, the potoroo dines extensively on native truffles, which grow beneath the ground. Much like the truffle dogs and truffle pigs that sniff out France's coveted Périgord truffles, the potoroos rely on their long, powerful noses to descry the scent of Tasmanian truffles, the different species of which have been described as smelling like bubblegum, peanut butter, gasoline, and rotting onions. They use the long, sharp claws on their front paws to dig them up.

The truffles are a type of mycorrhizal fungus, and they have a symbiotic relationship with trees. A truffle draws on a tree's roots for sugar and minerals, but it gives back to the tree a super-growing boost. In a study completed in mainland Australia, trees paired with truffle symbionts grew as much as ten times faster than trees that were deprived of their truffle partners. Truffles are like forest fertilizer. And potoroos are inadvertently like forest farmers, spreading the spores of truffles when they eat and excrete them. It's a delicate balance—a classic ecosystem, with one hand washing another and another in a nearly invisible chain.

So if the foxes eat up all the potoroos, it's not only going to have an impact on the animals; it will change Tasmania's entire ecosystem as well. Interestingly, there is one other Tasmanian animal that eats even more fungus than the long-nosed potoroo—the Tasmanian bettong. Already extinct on the mainland, this little creature is fox bait, too.

Potoroos, in general, are adept at hiding, even creating small tunnels through the grass that they travel through surreptitiously. But it is unlikely they would be able to hide from a large population of foxes.

“Those potoroos don't have a burrow to hide in or anything. There's nowhere they can go to get away from the fox,” said John. They couldn't climb trees like the possum.

Even though our encounter with the potoroos was brief, we found them delightful. Like many of Tasmania's native mammals, they were eccentric and had an
Alice in Wonderland
quality. The thought of an intentionally introduced predator shredding through their numbers was maddening.

Ken and John decided to call it quits on the farm. Like all the other fox hunts on the island so far, ours had been unsuccessful. Ken drove us back to Launceston. On the way, we continued to scan the road and surrounding fields for quadrupeds, striped, red, fluffy, and otherwise. But we saw nothing on four legs. Ken told us his night was just beginning. He would be checking out another reputed fox haunt and then, in the early hours of the morning, go whistling for foxes. From the outskirts of town, we watched as Ken's vehicle disappeared into the Tasmanian night.