A YEAR or two ago at the launch of Dave Owen’s Thylacine book he materialised next to me in that peculiar way of his and asked what I thought of he and David Pemberton writing a devil book.

Dave probably guessed it was something I’d like to do and was being polite. The word “bastards” came to mind but fortunately “fantastic — how can I help?” came to mouth. I got excited. A book on devils was not there and the gap was becoming a handicap. Eric Guiler had done a nifty little booklet but it was not enough.

I’m familiar with Dave Owen’s work and know Doozie well; well enough to remember him nearly wetting himself when he saw his first devil. Dave Owen understands natural history and is an excellent writer — experienced, versatile and best of all, readable. Doozie is an excellent natural historian, disciplined scientist and a not-half-bad writer. Both have interesting accents and can drink well — all ideal qualifications for authorship. Allen and Unwin provided the means and now we have an end. Congratulations to you all.

Reading this devil book is a real pleasure, especially where I’m mentioned. I‘m sure I looked like a grinning, nodding idiot while reading it. The Daves have captured much of what makes devils so special. I have learned a lot about devils from this book, things I’ve overlooked, things I just never knew and things I had been wrong about. Never again will I call a eurogenital drag a cloacal drag and neither should any of you.

It’s great to see the book’s generous acknowledgments. Eric Guiler, the father of scientific field studies on devils, inspires many of us. Androo Kelly and Menna Jones have done a huge amount to increase our appreciation of devils. So many others have contributed to what we know of the pied jumbuck-gobbler. There are many from farmers, visiting professors, photographers and film-makers, journalists, vets, tourism operators and the many boffins and volunteers dealing with Devil Facial Tumour Disease. It’s good too, to see contributions from youngsters and Tasmanian aboriginals. After all, devils are a community issue.

The state government cops some criticism over its handling of the devil disease issue but I don’t think it’s performed too badly considering the shock. There was a brief fumble but once the situation sunk in, deep concern was across the political spectrum and support and serious money poured in. Not many people realise how unusual that is for wildlife, let alone a species not then officially threatened. I sometimes worry about society’s focus on threatened species because it largely comes at the expense of common species, exactly the position we found ourselves in with devils. The only pity is it took such a calamity to let us catch up our knowledge to where it should have been decades ago.

Still, it’s happening now and after all, the book coincides with an urgency to be inclusive — a champion team will help devils through this current drama a lot better than a team of champions.

Devils are still persecuted by some

Action has to go further than devil disease too. Devils are still persecuted by some and our landscape is rapidly changing. We may have 60,000 less devils than we should have. Each night, that means there may be 100 tonnes of food available that simply wasn’t there a few years ago. It’s the potential this gives for foxes to establish that puts the fear of god into me. We have had no hard evidence for two years but the recent confirmation of another fox scat is the next ring of the bell. It’s good to see the Daves’ book tackles that issue too and I implore the fox sceptics to think long and hard about what they are about.

The worst racism and speciesism is born of suspicion. For far too long devils have been the usual suspects, suffering brutally from European predator hysteria fuelled by myth and chinese whispers. Again — a pity it takes something as horrible as this disease to open those attitudes to change.

I’m a huge fan of curiosity and first hand experience. The combination leads to empathy and sympathy, one reason I’m so keen on wildlife tourism as a means to open people to nature conservation.

Wildlife parks achieve this to a high degree but some people want more and the Devil Restaurant concept as mastered by the Marrawah silverback Geoff King services a steady trickle of desire to get closer to the wild. It amazes me how people who have disdained devils can quickly be neutralised to the point of bemusement if not downright appreciation just by finding out someone they know values the species. It doesn’t even have to be someone they like. It really defeats that “bloody useless animal” idiom so common in Tasmania.

We are all in the same pouch

Humans after all, are highly social things — we are all in the same pouch.

To me, the devil is the essence of wildness. If you took what is untamed about Tasmania, distilled it to a thick, dark paste and opened the lid I bet it’d growl — or have escaped already, trashing the place in the process.

Omnipresent is my one word to describe devils; everywhere but nowhere, and I have seminal moments to prove it.

28 years ago I was camped with Nigel Brothers at Cape Grim, a very rare privilege. Fire going, sausages sizzling, wind as always from the North West. There we were draining the port flagon watching the sun set and a devil simply materialised on a nearby mound, bakalite red, nose up, sniffing. We glanced at each other, looked back and it was gone. I can clearly remember the ash lengthening impossibly on Nigel’s rollie as we waited, naturally in vain.

The second time was a mere 23 years ago, surveying peregrines at the Ross Quoin. We had just found a clutch of half eaten nestlings, wondering what might have committed such sacrilege. Something caught my eye just meters below — a devil languidly stretching out from a crevasse to catch some rays. I again carefully turned sideways to get Nigel’s attention, then looked back and the bloody thing had gone again. This elusiveness had to be something to do with Nigel or devils. The third, and best time settled it.

Much more recently, I was in shearers’ quarters at ‘Brambletyre’ sleeping with the door open. Early one morning at first light something woke me suddenly. I drifted off then awoke again and sat up. On the lino was a perfect set of wet devil prints coming into my room, right up to my bed, two hind feet where the devil had stood up and sniffed me, then a trail out. As I took in the scene the sun came through the door and evaporated the footprints one by one, within seconds leaving nothing. I can remember grinning all day.

Both pragmatic and uncompromising

Devils present the ultimate conundrum: both pragmatic and uncompromising. Maybe it’s that devils seem to know exactly what they want. Not an animal to do things by halves, devils eat, mate, shit and sleep flat out. They even stand still flat out. In the oddest way, the Thylacine seemed less sure of itself and somewhat unable to adapt. Then again, it was never given a chance.

Devils are adaptable and notoriously hardy, without question the toughest animal I’ve met. One July a few years ago, I was called to check a devil someone had seen the night before injured on the side of the road at Bothwell. They went to help but it growled at them. I found it at 8am, the back half in a frozen puddle, seemingly dead. I pulled it out with an ice ring around it and nearly fell over — it was still alive. I suddenly felt this urge, far beyond logic, to help. I tucked it in to a pet pack and sped off to the vet in that style special to government or your dad’s car. 30 minutes later the patient stirred, muttering and grumbling — scratching around. I was stunned and felt oddly elated that such life-forces existed. Sadly, she had nearly a right angle break in the spine and had to be put down. To quote the Daves — “devils never give up”.

One night a quarter of a century ago, my boss had a devil in a box in his car. All through the night a car horn blew every minute or so. He blamed the local hoons but it turned out the devil had escaped the box and spent the night climbing the steering wheel, pacing the dashboard, falling off, climbing the wheel treading on the horn, falling, and so on. In the end it got behind the back seat and chewed through the fibreboard into the boot. He found it curled up on the spare wheel. All the windows were completely covered in footprints and there was a steaming signature on the front seat, all duly admired.

Devils seem condemned to ceaseless patrolling. Maybe a thorough search of Homer’s Iliad or Odyssey would find some dark task assigned them by the gods but it might be just about not missing out on a party somewhere. Maybe it’s a Tasmanian thing.

They can be plucky too. Ian Swan of Birralee told me of a terrible din from his little pack of sheepdogs prancing around a tussock one evening. He checked, worried it might be a snake, but there was an exhausted but defiant little devil probably caught raiding the dog bones. Ian told me he had the distinct impression the dogs were glad to be rescued.

But, these assets are not all machismo. Once I put my head into what I thought might be an old thylacine den and growled for fun. Something growled back and I heard a swish of sand. I jumped up, banging my head and a devil rushed out jaw-chomping then dived back. It scared the hell out of me and I later found she had young there. Probably a good thing I haven’t spent much time in Africa.

Mother devils are exquisitely tender

Mother devils are exquisitely tender with their young but even ‘Fagans’ have their moments. I remember two old males I had to keep in a divided box overnight. I couldn’t sleep — the howls and growls and crashes and then … nothing. I checked, expecting a bloody settlement, but there they were, divider chewed to shreds, two big dudes camped on top of each other, peeking coyly at me. Not asocial; maybe oddsocial, both cool and uncool.

It’s rare that I deal with devils and don’t learn something — be it those wonderful pups Kate and I have reared, filming and tourism, roadkills, trapping trips or those amazing mums, diseased and on their last legs, still rearing their young. In its homocentricity, modern society insists we clearly classify everything. Well, whatever box you put devils in, they’ll get out so there’s lots of surprises yet from this wee beast; I guarantee it.

This book shares with devils something elusive — the ability to keep you utterly engaged and I don’t just hope — I expect it will make a difference. It’s the first and others will follow but I bet it’ll be the best for some time.

It’s an absolute pleasure to declare Owen and Pemberton’s advocacy for the Tasmanian devil open.

May it never close.

The Tasmanian Devil
By David Owen and David Pemberton
Hbk $35.00
Accompanying volume to Platypus (Moyal) and Thylacine (Owen), all attractive demi-tasse hardcovers

David Owen is the author of nine novels, most of which are set in Tasmania. He is the editor of the Australian literary journal Island and the author of Thylacine: The Tragic Tale of the Tasmanian Tiger.

David Pemberton is the Vertebrate Curator at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart.

Books reviews at:
http://www.api-network.com/cgi-bin/reviews/detail.cgi?n=1741143683
http://www.publish.csiro.au/nid/18/pid/5149.htm

Book launch
Bond Store, TMAG
16 October 2005